


Stranded

by Kiera540



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Comfort, Healing pods, How Do I Tag, Hurt, Hurt Keith (Voltron), Hurt Lance (Voltron), Hurt Shiro (Voltron), Hurt/Comfort, Injury, Major Character Injury, Major Character(s), Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Space Dad Shiro (Voltron), Team Voltron Family
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-27
Updated: 2019-05-28
Packaged: 2019-05-29 13:01:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 29,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15073694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kiera540/pseuds/Kiera540
Summary: All of the Lions of Voltron are shot down on a deserted alien planet by the Galra and they must find each other before the they return.  Coran, Allura, and the Castle of Lions have problems of their own and cannot help.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Pidge is referred to as “she/her” in this fic simply because that’s what they called Pidge after the reveal that she was a girl. I know a lot of fanfic refer to Pidge as “they/them” but I decided to go by what the show says. This story can be put into any of the seasons as it was not written with a certain season in mind, although some events from the show are referenced. I don’t have a beta, so any mistakes are my own, feel free to point it out if you notice it. No flames in the comments please. 
> 
> Disclaimer- I do not own, or claim to own, any of these characters, they all belong to their respected owners, I simply create fanfiction with them. Any similarities to real people or real events is purely coincidental.

It was supposed to be an easy mission. The lions weren’t supposed to be shot down leaving their paladins stranded on a deserted alien planet. The castle wasn’t supposed to be forced out of the planet’s atmosphere or risk being destroyed.

“…ith! Can you hear… Kei…wake up! Keith!”

Keith snapped awake as Shiro yelled his named through the coms.

“Shiro?” he groaned, head still foggy as the memories of the battle swirled around in his mind.

“Keith are you okay?” Shiro asked concern and pain laced in his voice.

“Yeah I-I think so. How are you? The others?”

“I don’t know. I think my coms were damaged I can only reach you.”

Keith could hear the pain in Shiro’s voice and noticed he didn’t answer his question, but before he could press the issues Shiro was speaking again.

“Can you get out of your lion? We have to find the others and find a way to contact Corran and Allura.”

“Yeah, alright. Pidge can probably find a way, but Shiro are you okay?”

“I’ll live. Now get out of Red, my scanners aren’t picking up any Galra and we need to find the others before they come back. The short-range scanners in our suits will pick up their locations and pinpoint them when we get close.”

Keith still wasn’t pleased with the answer he received but he knew Shiro was right. They had to find the others. Now. He carefully started to move out of his pilot’s chair and collapsed instantly with a groan; barely catching himself before he face planted.

“What happened?” Shiro called out, but Keith could hardly hear him as he grasped at his left leg while pain tore through his body, his hands came away sticky and red, he knew he was bleeding, but he couldn’t tell from where. He grabbed a long strip of bandages and wrapped his whole thigh as best as he could in the limited lighting of his out-of-commission lion.

“Keith, what happened?” A concerned black paladin tried again.

“My leg. I’m fine. It just shocked me.” He lied, Shiro had enough on his plate he didn’t need this.

“Can you walk?” Keith knew he didn’t believe him for a second, but Shiro also accepted the fact that he was in no position to help.

“Yeah I’m fine.” Keith said, stealing himself before he stood up and made his way out of Red, his scanners started clearing slightly as he looked around. As far as he could tell the planet was a deserted desert. Great. He kept spinning until a blip on his screen made him screech to a halt; without a doubt, it was a lion’s signature.

“Shiro I found someone! It’s…Lance! I found Lance, he’s not far!”

“Great, you go for him. I found- it looks like Pidge.”

“Okay we’ll get them then meet up.”

“Sounds good. Let’s move.”

* * *

Allura and Coran could barely hear their own thoughts, much less each other, over the various blaring alarms roaring throughout the Castle. Garla ships raced after the damaged craft, there was no way to outrun them and with the Castle already being pushed to its limits fighting them off was out.

“We have to do something!” Allura yelled over the alarms searching desperately through the screens in front of her, racking her brain for an answer that had to be there. She knew would be there. A flash of light to her left caught her attention- a nebula, but not just any nebula, Allura remembered her father warning her about this particular type.

“Coran look!”

“What are you suggesting Princess?” Coran eyed the nebula wearily, nervous of her answer.

The nebula in question was unique in the way that it threw off electrical radiation. Electrical radiation that can short out ships, and if you were close enough, had the power to tear them apart. It was an insane idea, but it was their only hope.

“Take us closer.”

That was the answer Coran feared but he knew the Princess’s thinking. It was their only chance and the look in Allura’s eyes made him fear for anyone who tried to say it wouldn’t work.

“The nebula will affect us as well!” Coran called out but slowly started angling the Castle towards the dangerous nebula.

“The Castle’s defenses should protect us.”

“Aye, Princess. If they were full and undamaged they would. In their current state there’s no way of knowing if they can handle that type of stress.”

“We have no choice Corran. We must do this! The shields will hold. They have to!” Allura’s famous stubbornness broke through her nervous exterior and with that look in her eye and the tone of her voice she could make anyone believe that it would work, even a multi-armed small alien who refused to go over cracks but had a love for teludavs.  
His breath coming in short pants, Keith relied heavily on his jetpack as he slowly navigated toward Lance’s lion.

“Lance, Lance can you hear me? It’s Keith.” The red paladin tried again, and again he heard no response.

“Shiro, how are you doing?” he asked concerned, the green lion was further away from Shiro than Lance was from Keith and Shiro didn’t sound good.

His breath sounding almost identical to Keith’s he replied, “I’m okay, still some ways out though. How’s your leg?”

 _Typical Shiro_ Keith thought, he was probably hurt worse than Keith was, but his only concern was for his team and not himself.

“I’ll live.” He said, copying the older man’s answer from earlier, as he continued to run as fast as his leg could handle. His eyes focused on the small blip on his visor, steadily growing closer.

“Lance!” he called again refusing to give up on the blue paladin. Keith heard a small groan that nearly made him face plant for the second time that day, that definitely wasn’t Shiro it had to have been Lance.

“Lance! Come on, wake up!” Keith yelled, picking up his pace even as his leg screamed at him. It sounded as if Lance tried to say his name but was then cut off by a ragged cough.

“Lance are you okay?” Keith only received a groan in response. “Hang on I’m almost there!”

“What’s going on?” Shiro asked, making Keith remember that his coms didn’t work properly.

“I heard from Lance, well kind of. He doesn’t sound good, but he’s alive. I’m almost to him.”

“Okay tell me what you see when you get there. I’m about half way to Pidge.”

Keith didn’t respond, he just continued to sprint as best as he could to the lion now coming into view. The blue lion had a hard landing judging by the impact zone around it that Keith had to use his jetpack to clear. The hatch on Blue’s stomach opened to his touch quickly and Keith shot inside, his progress was halted by the protective door separating the rest of the lion from the pilot. He pulled on the door, but it didn’t budge, and without Pidge to hack it open, opening the door wasn’t going to be possible, so instead he put his hand flat on a spot next to the door and closed his eyes.

 _Please_ , he called out with his mind, _I know you’re just trying to protect him. I’m trying to help him, but I can’t do that unless you let me in._ Keith let his stubbornness, the fear for his friend, and his determination to help him flow through his body and to his hand, _Please, I have to help him_. The door slowly creaked open as the lion accepted him, and his words to be true. Rushing through the door the second it was open enough to fit him he took in the sight before him, his heart dropped immediately as he rushed to the pilot’s chair, ripping off his own helmet as he went.

“Lance, stay with me!”

* * *

 

Racing toward the nebula, Coran and Allura were trying to figure out just how to do this. The Galra ships needed to be destroyed, but they couldn’t risk getting caught in the blast.

“Princess, look!” Coran yelled over the alarms, staring intently at a flashing screen not even looking back as he sent a copy to Allura. She too stared intently at the new screen seeing his idea, it was crazy, but there seemed to be no other way. The nebula was throwing off a small gravitational force in one area, and in this area, there were no electrical flares.

“If we focus our shields on one side, we can use the gravitational pull of the nebula to shoot us out of the flares range, while the Galra attempting to follow us will be hit!” Allura voiced Coran's idea aloud. Coran glanced back then and Allura nodded at him, as he adjusted the Castles heading, if it was even slightly off the ship could be destroyed, the Galra following them were much less careful seeming to not even notice as some ships started to spark.

“We’re almost there! Most of the Galra ships are still intact!” Coran noted, as sparks flew all around them, but as long as they stayed on their current course to the gravity area they would be safe.

“Focusing particle barrier shields now.” As Allura closed her eyes, she called out to her father, _Please, Father, help us! The Paladins need us!_ Explosions surrounded the ship now, none of the Galra were on the singular safe course, causing the electrical currents to hit them dead on.

“We’re going to make it!”

Coran regretted speaking those words before the last syllable made it past his mustache, for at that exact moment; a damaged Galra fighter, one of the few remaining, crashed into the back of their unprotected engines violently throwing them off course.

“Raise full particle barrier!” Allura shouted as the Castle spiraled out of control-and directly into an electrical flare. Electricity ripped through the ship sending currents in every direction, simultaneously destroying the remaining Galra while wreaking havoc on the Castle of Lions. Coran’s control console basically turned into a mini firework show as he jumped back from it, while Allura was thrown from her unsecure position getting the wind knocked out of her. The blaring alarms seemed to reach a new height before slowly dying off all together, the lights pulsed then abruptly shut off; the Altean Princess braced for an explosion, shocked when the next sound she heard was Coran’s frantic voice.

“Princess, Princess are you alright? Allura?”

“Yes, I’m fine,” she answered as she sat up dazed, “what happened? We didn’t explode?” she meant that last part as a fact, but it came out as a question instead.

“No we didn’t!” Coran laughed, “A Galra crashed into us sending us off course, but the gravitational force had pushed us far enough out that even with the particle barrier only partially raised the blasts weren’t deadly! We did lose power though.”

Allura smiled despite the terrible circumstances, they were alive, as for losing power? That happened all the time, she was sure that Coran could get the Castle running in no time, his grandfather built it after all.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow! I am floored by the response this fic has gotten! Thank you so much for all of the likes, and kind reviews they really encouraged me to write this next chapter. So, once again, thank you! I hope you enjoy this chapter as well!
> 
> Disclaimer- I do not own, or claim to own, any of these characters; they all belong to their respected owners, I simply create fanfiction with them. Any similarities to real people or real events is purely coincidental.

Shiro’s progress was slow, but it was progress; thankfully the area was flat allowing him to half-limp half-fly his way to Pidge’s beacon. _Please let her be okay!_ He prayed to anyone who would listen, _She has to be okay!_ Shiro grunted after a particularly hard landing jarred his new injuries; to be fair, he had hastily looked himself over, and just as fast, wrapped a roll of bandages around his bleeding torso and over what appeared to be a burn on his right leg, before he ran out of his lion to get Pidge. Slightly passing the half-way point to the Green Lion was when he heard it-

“Lance stay with me!”

Keith’s voice froze Shiro to his core while fear clawed its way into him, Keith’s voice had started off clear before growing distant, Shiro guessed that Keith had removed his helmet at that point, but he had to try anyways.

“Keith what’s going on? What happened to Lance? Keith!” Shiro growled out of frustration as he forced his body onwards again, he knew that Keith wouldn’t bother answering him, too engrossed on the situation at hand, even if he had heard him. His progress speed had drastically increased as anger fueled his movements, he needed to get to Pidge, if she could find a way to contact the Castle they could all meet up, and Lance could get into a healing pod…again. As he reached the three-quarters point, he tried his coms again,

“Pidge can you hear me? Hello? Pidge?” the static on the other end did nothing to improve his mood, but he refused to fear too much for her though, he knew his coms had to be damaged as Keith had heard something from Lance before reaching him while Shiro had heard nothing. The impact zone around the Green Lion didn’t look that bad to be honest, but he knew looks could be deceiving, he was proven correct as the stomach door creaked open slowly from its awkward position having landed on top of its front right leg forcing the corner of the shield to be wedged into the ground. After what felt like hours the door finally open enough for him to get inside only to be stopped by another door, the protective door had a large dent in it and there was no way it would open on its own, Great. Shiro thought as his hand started to glow he jammed it into one side and, grunting from the effort and strain on his body, forced the final door open.

“Pidge!” he called as he raced inside, “Are you okay?” he asked gently removing her helmet. She had a small cut above her eyebrow, but other than what was most likely a bad case of bruises underneath her armor, she appeared to be fine-and unconscious.

“Pidge I need you to wake up.” He said as he shook her gently, “I will pour water on you if I have to.” His warning worked as a “Don’t you freakin dare.” was slurred out from the small person in his arms.

“Are you okay? Can you move?” humor immediately replaced with concern as golden eyes slowly started to open.

“That was totally Lance’s fault.” She mumbled as she started to sit up, rubbing her shoulder as she went. Shiro had to bite back a laugh, helping her stand up which turned out to be a mistake as a strangled “ouch!” was pulled from her lips as she plopped back into her chair holding her left leg. Shiro carefully shifted her armor to look at her leg, finding a relatively small, but deep cut- almost as if glass had pierced her, but upon looking around he found none, and there didn’t appear to be any inside of the wound. _Can no one escape leg injuries?_ Shiro thought as he grabbed bandages to tightly wrap the wound, _Well, at least hers isn’t currently bleeding._

“How are the others?” she asked after he finished, attempting to stand again, more carefully this time.

“Keith is hurt, but okay. My coms only allow me to talk to him, he’s with Lance, but I don’t know how he is; I can’t hear anything, and Keith won’t answer me.”

“Here let me try.” she said calmly before taking a deep breath and full on yelling, “Lance, Keith! Stop making heart eyes at each other and answer the coms! We got a problem here!”

That was the first time that day that Shiro was glad his coms didn’t work properly as standing next to Pidge practically made him jump he didn’t even want to imagine what that must sound like through the coms.

* * *

“Okay, uh, try it now.” Coran called as he hung upside down in the main turbine trying to restore the power to the engines, Allura walked back over to Coran’s recently repaired station and attempted the startup sequence, only to hear Coran yelp through the coms.

“Nope not that. Definitely not that.”

“Have you tried adjusting the vlexagane?”

“Yes, but it meant we didn’t get enough power to the somoflange.”

“What about the poklones on the agroclams?”

“It’s worth a shot. Just a tick!”

“Just a tick.” Allura sighed, they had been there for nearly a varga and were still without power; she was running out of ideas. They had gotten the navigation system back online, and they could get their communications working, but it meant that the engines wouldn’t have power, and now trying to fix the engines the long-range coms, that they would need to hear the paladins, were shorting out. _Father what should we do? We must help the paladins, but we can’t get the ship to work._ The mice seemed to sense her distress and snuggled close at her feet trying to provide some form of comfort.

“I don’t suppose you know what we should do?” she asked, leaning down to look at them; they shook their small heads, but still put on a little show to try to make her feel better.

“Okay Princess let’s try it again.” Coran called through the coms as Allura carefully stepped around the mice to get back to his control panel to begin the startup sequence again. A loud sputtering sound was heard, but after what felt like a deca-phoeb, they thrummed to life and held strong.

“Yes, Coran you did it!” Allura cheered, a smile once again gracing her features.

“Ha, ha! I did! I’m going to try to restore the long-range coms again, I have a feeling we’re going to need them.”

“Sounds good Coran. I’ll set a course for the planet. We’re still pretty far out.”

* * *

“Lance?” Keith called, gently cupping his face, he felt a pulse, but it did little to reassure him, Lance was going in and out of consciousness so much that it was difficult to get a read on his injuries. The obvious ones were the dried blood from his nose and mouth, and some form of a stab wound on the right side of his chest, but for the life of him Keith couldn’t find what had hit him.

“Lance, buddy, I need you to wake up and stay awake for me.” He said worried as he carefully removed Lance’s chest plate, he was fairly certain he heard Shiro yell something through the coms, but at this point he honestly couldn’t care less. Lance, now freed of his damaged chest plate, let out a groan as Keith gently inspected the wound before suddenly stopping when Lance weakly gripped his hand after he hit a more sensitive area.

“Lance?” Keith practically whispered, as Lance’s eyelids started to drop again, “Lance, I need you to stay awake. Can you do that for me?” Lance slurred out a response, but his eyes stayed open, slowly releasing Keith’s hand to allow him to continue. _Okay good, you’re going to love me after this._ Keith thought sarcastically as he grabbed bandages and a disinfectant bottle, and sure enough, Keith was right as Lance’s eyes flew fully open and his body twitched violently as Keith poured some of the bottles contents onto the wound.

“I know, buddy, I know. Hang on I’m almost done.” he tried to soothe Lance as he slowly came down from the shock of the sudden burn on his open wound as it was wrapped by Keith.

“Hey at least you’re staying awake now, right?” Lance managed a halfhearted glare at him and thought about smacking him before Pidge’s voice, clear as day, despite neither of them wearing their helmets rang through.

“Lance, Keith! Stop making heart eyes at each other and answer the coms! We got a problem here!”

Keith suddenly remembered that he was supposed to tell Shiro what he saw but had instead ripped his helmet off. With his newly retrieved helmet on his head he and Lance both answer through his,

“Sorry what’s going on- “

“We aren’t making heart eyes!”

Keith rolled his eyes and tried again.

“Pidge what’s up?”

“Oh, you know, we’re just stranded on an alien planet, most of us are injured, and I’m pretty sure you gave Shiro a heart attack by not answering him.”

“I was a little busy.”

“Never mind that now. Keith how’s Lance?” Shiro’s voice cut in before they could start arguing.

Keith walked a little further away from Lance before answering in a low voice,  
“He’s not good Shiro. Some kind of stab wound to his chest, I can’t find what caused it. I don’t think he’ll be able to walk even though he’ll probably say he can. I don’t know if I can move him by myself or if I even should.”

Shiro looked back to Pidge then speaking directly to her, “Pidge see if you can find Hunk.” before turning around and addressing Keith. “Alright just stay there we’ll find Hunk and come to you. Oh, and Keith? Check Lance’s legs for injuries.”

Keith was confused by that but did as he was told anyways, thinking that Shiro was worried he had missed something since he had gotten distracted by Lance’s chest, and sure enough he was right, Lance had a long cut on his left thigh, but it didn’t appear too deep as he wrapped that as well.

“You were right Shiro, he had a cut on his left leg.”

“I knew it.” Shiro muttered, _Why could no one avoid leg injuries?_ He thought again before Pidge interrupted his thoughts.

“I found Hunk, he seems to be about half-way between our current positions, but I don’t think his coms are working. I can’t get anything through to him and I don’t even hear static on his end.”

“Alright, Keith, Lance, stay where you are, Pidge and I will get Hunk and then we’ll meet up with you.”

“And maybe I can get a signal out from the Yellow Lion, Green’s too damaged to get a strong enough one out without a boost.”

“Okay let’s go Pidge.”

“We’re coming for you buddy. Just hang on.” She said as they exited the Green Lion to get the remaining paladin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you liked that! Again, please leave a like; or comment what you thought so I can improve. Chapter 3 is on its way! See you next time!  
> ~Kiera540


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ta-da! Nothing to say except for—Enjoy!!!!
> 
> Disclaimer- I do not own, or claim to own, any of these characters, they all belong to their respected owners, I simply create fanfiction with them. Any similarities to real people or real events is purely coincidental.

Shiro still couldn’t shake the strange feeling that he got every time he thought about the legs injuries, upon looking down at his own leg again, he realized there was a burn but there was also a long cut right next to it, _Four out of five paladins all having some kind of cut on their leg can’t be a coincident,_ he thought as they exited the Green Lion to start the journey to Hunk.

After running and jetpacking for a while, a sudden groan of frustration from Pidge brought him out of his thoughts as he looked down at her.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“My scanners just reset and now Hunk’s signal, which was right in front of us, is far to my left. Check yours.”

As he checked, Shiro noticed she was right, they were no longer going in the correct direction even though they were just moments before.

“How did that happen?” Shiro’s confusion evident in his voice, he was hoping that Pidge had some sort of scientific explanation for this and could fix the problem before they ended up out of anyone’s reach.

“I don’t know. This planet does seem to have some strange readings being thrown around, but it shouldn’t affect our scanners like this.” She replied looking down at a screen projected from her wrist.

“Can you do something so our scanners can avoid the interference?”

“Maybe, but not from here,” she took a deep breath before continuing, locking eyes with him, “Shiro, I think we have to go back to the Green Lion. I can’t do anything from here like this, and unless you want to be spinning around in the dark on an unknown planet we have to go back to Green.”

Shiro’s dislike of the idea was obvious, but at the same time he was having a hard time coming up with an argument. Without their scanners working properly they would never be able to find Hunk using them, and with the darkness quickly descending on them they wouldn’t be able to get a visual on him either.

“I don’t like it,” he needlessly said, “but you’re right. We’ll never find each other this way. Keith did you hear all of that?”

“Yeah, I heard, and I agree. Lance and I will hold up here, we all have emergency supplies in each lion that will last at least a few days.”

“Alright. How’s Lance doing?”

“He’s actually looking better. He might even be able to move a short distance in the morning.”

“Good, let’s go Pidge.” Shiro put a hand on her shoulder as they turned back around, he knew that her suggestion of leaving without Hunk was eating away at her and he couldn’t have that. They needed her now more than ever.

“Pidge,” he forced her to look at him, “I’m sure Hunk is okay. We will find him in the morning.”

She gave him a soft smile, the gears already turning in her head as she planned out ways to modify the scanners and maybe even be able to contact Hunk.

By the time they got back to Green, the last shreds of light were disappearing, Shiro took one last look around they area before ducking inside to find Pidge already furiously typing code into a computer that she apparently kept in her lion.

* * *

“Did you get all of that Lance?” Keith checked after hearing Shiro and Pidge start to make their way back to her lion. Lance nodded his head, he really did look better, but at the same time, he was exhausted. Keith went back to where the medical supplies were kept, if they were going to stay here longer-and now that Lance’s wound was no longer bleeding, and he had a chance to recover, the wound needed proper attention.

Lance glared at him as he came back, clearly unhappy with what was about to happen, but didn’t protest because he knew it was necessary.

“Sorry, Lance, but we’ve got to sew that wound up otherwise you’ll probably bleed out in the middle of the night.” Keith said anyways.

“Do you even know how to do that?” Lance questioned as Keith started the necessary preparation.

“Yes, they taught us at the Garrison, remember?” At Lance’s blank look he added, “Did you even pay attention to anything while you were there?”

“Hey I did pay attention!” Lance protested while Keith simply raised an eyebrow at him in disbelief.

“Okay, sure Lance. Whatever you say.”

Lance glared at him the entire time he sewed up his wound, even as he gripped his seat tighter and his breath came out as a hiss from the sting of the needle. After Keith had finished, the puncture wound was bleeding lightly so he wrapped it and applied some pressure to convince it to stop.

“How did you even manage to get a wound like this anyways?” he question.

“How am I supposed to know? I was unconscious!” Lance argued.

Keith frowned slightly as his brow furrowed, he still hadn’t found an object that could have punctured Lance like that, nor was there blood anywhere else except for where Lance was sitting.

“It just doesn’t make sense; how could an object stab you and then completely disappear? No trace at all.”

“I don’t know, why don’t you ask Pidge- our resident genius.” Lance was obviously done with this conversation; he would never admit it, but now he himself was starting to wonder what had hit him, he wanted revenge on that thing after all.

“She has enough on her plate right now.” Keith was zoning out now as well, he figured he could last another ten minutes before the exhaustion sets in and he passes out for the night, so he decided to use this time to rack his brain for the answer that had to be right in front of him.

Sure enough, ten minutes later Keith was having trouble keeping his eyes open while Lance was snoring softly from the pilot’s chair. Silently thanking Alfor for the lion’s ability to regulate its temperature, he laid down next to Lance’s chair and promptly passed out.

* * *

 

“Hey Coran, what did you say the name of this planet was again?” Allura asked, trying desperately to keep her mind off of the Castle’s snail speed as they were only running off of auxiliary power which, in order to keep other essential systems online, meant the Castle’s speed was decreased to an unrecognizable pace.

“I believe it’s Thrakzian Princess.” Coran yelled slightly through the coms, he was currently checking the oxygen levels and other systems to make sure their limited power was still holding.

“I don’t really know anything about Thrakzian, do you?”

“I’m afraid not, although I’m sure you could find something about it in the ships archive.”

“Most likely, although does the Archive have power?” She raised an eyebrow, the auxiliary power was strained enough as it was, she doubted she would be able to access the Archive without pulling power from another system.

“On second thought maybe don’t do that.” He laughed nervously, temporarily forgetting their situation. “I’ll see if I can get the main power up and running, at this rate it doesn’t matter what we know about the planet; we’ll never reach it!”

Allura sighed as she was once again left in silence, it would have been peaceful, maybe even relaxing if she wasn’t too busy worrying for the paladins. I swear I’ve heard of this planet before! She thought, trying to remember something, anything!

At that moment Coran walked back in, “Princess you look exhausted, you must rest.” He tried to persuade her.

“How could I sleep at a time like this?”

“I can guarantee you the others are as well. Rest. I can take care of this. We’ll need to be fresh when we get there.”

Although unhappy, she knew he was right, “Fine, but just for a little while!” She said pointing a finger at him expecting him to honor the time limit.

Coran had absolutely zero intentions of doing that, fully prepared to sedate her to keep her asleep.

* * *

“Hey Shiro?” Pidge asked quietly not wanting to disturb the man if he was already asleep. He was, but he had heard her anyways, humming out a response to prove it not bothering to open his eyes or check the time that he knew had to be an ungodly hour.

“Do you really think Hunk is okay?” She asked in a small voice, causing Shiro to fully open his eyes and look at her.

“Pidge, I know he is. He has the Yellow Lion to protect him, and his bayard. I haven’t even seen anything on this planet that he would need to protect himself from.”

“But Lance was hurt badly in the crash and he had the same protection as Hunk has!” Pidge had obviously predicted his response, firing back with hers after the words had barely left Shiro’s mouth.

“Pidge,” Shiro moved closer to the smallest paladin, “we all know that the Yellow Lion has the heaviest armor out of all of the lions, and you said it yourself the reason we can’t contact him is due to a technical problem not because something bad happened. We’ve trained and fought beside him, we know how tough he is, he’ll be okay for one night. As a matter of fact, I’m sure he’s doing what he can to find and contact us.”

Pidge didn’t know what it was, but whenever Shiro made a speech-it worked. Every time. The logical part of her brain saying that it was just his personality, the way he was, but another part of her told her that it had something to do with his Black Paladin nature; something deeper and ingrained into who he was, why he was Black after all. She smiled at him, before a large yawn interrupted anything else she was going to say, catching Shiro’s attention.

“Come on, you need to sleep if you want to find Hunk.” He said as he leaned back against the side of the lion while Pidge plopped down next to him using his uninjured leg as a pillow, he shifted his leg under her slightly but didn’t seem to mind after that. Space Dad mode activated. was all Pidge could think about the matter before falling asleep in her surprisingly comfortable location.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Please like and comment so that I can improve. Thanks for all the likes and comments that I have gotten, they mean the world to writers!!! Chapter 4 is in progress. See you next time!  
> ~Kiera540


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wish to point out that I had every intention of this being just a short little one-chapter fic, I never thought that this would happen. Thank you so much for all of the support! 
> 
> Disclaimer- I do not own, or claim to own, any of these characters, they all belong to their respected owners, I simply create fanfiction with them. Any similarities to real people or real events is purely coincidental.

Keith bolted upright, shocked awake by an incessant pounding on the protective door that broke through his sleep coma. Lance jerked awake a second after him, shooting him a confused look, Keith just shook his head slowly approaching the door and drawing his bayard, fully prepared to stab the person who so rudely interrupted his sleep.

“SHIRO?!?!” He gasped, forgetting about his stabbing plan as his brain was filled with nothing but shock.

“What?!” Lance questioned, sounding just as confused as Keith as he turned in his seat to look at them.

“What are you doing here? Why are you here?” A thousand more questions swirled inside his still groggy head, but one broke through the rest, “Wait, where’s Pidge?”

“Oh, Pidge is around. How’s he doing?”

Keith narrowed his eyes at him, something was off. Shiro would never allow Pidge to just wander around on a completely unknown planet, and weren’t they supposed to be getting Hunk anyways?

“He’s fine. Why are you here?” Keith remained firm in the doorway, blocking Shiro’s way and most of his view.

“He didn’t sound so good, so I thought we would check on him.”

Keith couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong, his voice sounded off, his stance—wait his stance! Shiro had said something to him about his leg before reaching Pidge, if his leg was hurt why would he be applying even pressure to both legs? He was hurt, that much Keith could tell through the coms, so why did he look perfectly fine now?

“Right. Do me a favor? What’s his last name again? I can’t seem to remember.”

“What are you doing-” Lance started before Keith shushed him.

“How is that relevant to the situation?” Shiro asked, anger and annoyance evident in his words.

“How did you even know what Lance sounded like, aren’t your coms broken?” Keith suddenly remembered that little detail and what Shiro had said earlier about how Lance sounded, something definitely wasn’t right.

“Oh screw it.” Shiro muttered under his breath before launching himself at Keith catching him off guard tackling him to the ground.  
“What are you doing?!” Keith yelled holding him at arm’s length above him.

“WHAT THE HELL?!” Lance yelled from his vantage point. Shiro’s back had started to…to change form? Before either of them knew what was happening, “Shiro” had fully transformed into a creature straight out of a horror movie, complete with pitch black skin, scales and spikes on its body, fangs, and a tail; Keith threw the thing off of him readying his sword for the creatures’ next strike.

He hated the fact that he was in a lion right now, his movement was extremely restricted, and Keith was determined to keep the creature far away from Lance who was now forcing his body into a standing position. The creature’s eyes were locked onto Lance, Keith hardly registered in its mind, all it wanted was its original target-the boy in blue. It wrapped its tail around Keith’s leg effectively holding him in place while at the same time it launched its whole body forward using its weight to pin him and his bayard. Having pinned Keith its attention returns to Lance, snarling at him but unable to approach him without releasing a furious Keith, so it waited, bating its time, it knew one of them would crack.

Lance could move now, sure, but he was in no shape to fight, that much was evident in his slightly hunched posture as he stared at the creature; there had to be a way to get it off of Keith without hurting him. Lance drew his bayard aiming his blaster at the creature in a silent warning, Keith still thrashed around under it, but it didn’t seem to care or notice as it continued to stare its prey down.

“Lance do it!” Keith could see his hesitation and he knew what it was for, Lance didn’t want to hurt him, but at this moment it was a risk they’d have to take.

“What about you?”

“Just do it!” Keith yelled again, if Lance shot it at the same time that Keith threw his weight upwards, the momentum might throw the thing straight out of the lion; he prepared his body, waiting for the shot. Lance took a deep breath and lined up his aim to be dead on the creature, still seemingly unfazed by the situation, Lance pulled the trigger, Keith executed his plan, but the creature proved heavier than he thought. The creature did fly backwards, and now Keith could see why it had been so calm before, Lance’s blast had barely affected it and now as it flew backwards, it arched his back pulling its tail, that was still wrapped around Keith’s leg, and flung him out of the still open doors on Blue’s stomach.

Confusion rocked through Keith as he landed hard on the ground outside of Blue, he quickly recovered hearing the shots Lance now fired freely at it, when Keith reached the creature with his bayard prepared to cut the thing open, his efforts proved to be in vain as Blue shot to life sending a high powered electrical shot up into the horror movie creature, it seemed to glow for a few moments before turning into nothing more than a pile of ash.

“What just happened?! How did it get in? Why did it look like Shiro? Where’s our Shiro?” Lance yelled rattling off the questions that swirled in his head, feeling a little sick from staring at the creatures disgusting form.

The two paladins stared at each other for a few minutes in shock before they both simultaneously yelled-

“PIDGE!”

* * *

 

Hunk jumped back as the panel he was currently working in started to fritz, it didn’t take him long to realize his coms weren’t working at all, he had spent the majority of yesterday trying to fix them but with no luck.

“Oh come on! We want the coms to work, we like talking to people!” He tried to persuade the panel into working and not zapping him. His words seemed to work to some degree as the panel stopped fritzing, _Maybe I’m thinking about this all wrong_ , he thought, _maybe instead of trying to contact all of the paladins, I just contact one!_

“Okay panel were going to try something different now.” He explained as he got back to work, continuing to explain everything he did in the hope that it wouldn’t zap him. It didn’t work.

“You did that on purpose!” Hunk accused the panel as he whipped his hand back, glaring at the panel that seem to mock him.

“Okay fine! Be like that!” He moved to a different panel across from the treacherous one and hoped it wouldn’t zap him. “Who needs to talk to people anyways? I’ll just boost my location beacon.” He muttered as he worked, _Actually that’s not a bad idea!_ He thought with a sudden idea, I _f I boost my location signal I can send a code to Pidge to let her know what’s going on on my end and as long as the signal was broadcasting she would be able to reply!_

Hunk cheered as he thought that, knowing it was a simple procedure and Pidge would be able to figure it out.

“Take that panel!” He sneered at the panel he was originally working on, that panel obviously hated him Hunk knew, but it didn’t matter now because he just found a work around to the coms that didn’t involve that panel at all. Hunk started humming along to a melody in his head as he worked, thinking of the others and hoping they were okay.

“I mean they have to be okay, right?” He said to this new, nicer panel, “I mean, I’m okay, well my arm hurts a little bit and I only have half a sandwich left after that it’s just space goo, but they are okay right?”

He sighed as he continued, he would know soon enough he supposed.

* * *

Pidge was peacefully asleep curled up next to Shiro when voices started yelling from her helmet on her pilot’s chair.

“What now?” She groaned, crawling to her chair, smacking Shiro’s leg to get his attention as she slipped her helmet on.

“PIDGE YOU’VE GOTTA ANSWER US!” Lance’s voice was the first thing she heard followed shortly by Keith’s.

“PIDGE WE HAVE A SERIOUS PROBLEM HERE!”

“YOU WON’T BELIEVE WHAT JUST HAPPENED!”

“IT COULD SHAPESHIFT!”

“MY BLASTER DIDN’T FAZE IT!”

“STOP YELLING!” Pidge shouted as loud as she could, interrupting their ranting and getting a raised eyebrow from Shiro as he also put his helmet on.

“Guys what happened?” Shiro asked only to be ignored as they resumed their shouting, though less hysterical and more serious now.

“Pidge, listen to me, are you sure that’s really Shiro that’s with you?” Keith asked, he had to be sure.

“What does that even mean? Of course, its him!” She responded looking to Shiro for an explanation, but he just shrugged, he was as clueless as her.

“We were just attacked, inside of Blue, by an alien who approach us in Shiro’s form. Apparently, they can shapeshift.” Keith elaborated.

“Wait, what do you mean inside Blue? A lion would never allow a hostile alien inside.”

“Yeah well maybe you should remind Blue of that!” Lance called, grumpily crossing his arms.

“How far did it get?”

“It got through the stomach door but couldn’t make it through the second door to us, we had to open the door ourselves.” Keith didn’t know why it really mattered but he knew better than to question Pidge’s questions.

“Maybe these creatures can change more than their physical appearance, maybe they can change on a molecular level giving their DNA the attributes and appearance of someone else’s DNA. That’s why it could get through the stomach doors, but there must have been a small trace of alien DNA left in the creature’s bloodstream causing Blue to be uncertain and keep the other door locked.”

Keith thought it over, while not as smart as Pidge, his basic understanding of what she said did sound possible, he glanced at Lance and could tell he had come to the same conclusion.

“Blue did figure it out after it shifted back and electrocuted it into a literal pile of space dust while my blaster did nothing.” Lance informed her.

“Electricity must react with this species somehow which would explain the violent reaction. Did you say that Blue had power?”

“Partial power.” Lance corrected, “I’m in no position to—”

A groan cut off Lance’s sentence, surprisingly it wasn’t from him but from Keith whose skin had gone pale and sweat started forming at his hairline.

“Ummmm we’re going to have to call you back.”

“Lance what happened?” Pidge and Shiro both tried without luck.

“Okay we need to find Hunk now. Did you figure out a way for our scanners to work?” Shiro asked already preparing to leave Green.

“Mostly, once we get close we’ll have to rely on our eyes since the scanners will get confused again.”

“Then let’s get moving.”

* * *

 

“Keith what’s wrong?” Lance grabbed his shoulders to steady him Keith was starting to sway a little bit. “Keith?”

“I’m okay”. His voice was shaky.

“No, you’re not.” Lance forced him to sit down and his eyes landed on his leg, _Oh great_ , he thought getting an idea as to what was wrong. Lance moved his hands to the bandages that had mostly come undone, Keith protested again saying he was fine, but Lance was having none of it; he was so out of it yesterday that he didn’t notice how much Keith’s leg was actually bothering him. Now Lance wasn’t an expert, but he knew a cut should not look like that, even with his limited knowledge he knew it was infected.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” Lance felt like slapping him for doing nothing for his cut while at the same time not allowing Lance to do anything the day before because he ‘needed to regain his strength’ as Keith constantly said.

“You were more important, you were worse.”

“That doesn’t mean you can just ignore yourself!” Lance reminded him angrily that personal care existed for a reason, while moving to get the appropriate medical supplies.

“Look it’s your friend! You know, the exact same disinfecting bottle you used on me.”

Keith gave him a half-hearted glare, knowing he was right, but Keith would never give him the satisfaction of hearing him say it out loud, before throwing his head back as the bottles contents made contact with his cut.

“See, now, if you did this earlier before it was infected it wouldn’t hurt as much.” Keith would have slapped him if he could’ve moved his arm but instead settled for a fiercer glare.

“Oh don’t give me that.” Lance rolled his eyes at him, “It’s not quite deep enough for stitches, which is good because I suck at that, but we’re going to have to watch it like a hawk.” Lance wrapped it tightly, causing Keith to wince slightly as pressure was applied to his still sensitive skin. Lance moved his fingers to his face, feeling his head and cheeks and chest before sighing.

“Just what I thought, you have a fever.” Lance informed him, shoving a water bottle into his hand before putting his helmet back on.

“Hey Pidge,” He called, “Listen I know you guys want to hurry up and find Hunk but check Shiro’s injuries before you leave otherwise he’ll pass out on you half way like Keith just tried to do.”

He heard Shiro start to protest but a commanding “SIT” from Pidge ended that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you guys enjoyed Chapter 4, we finally got to see Hunk! If you see a mistake feel free to point it out and I’ll fix it. Thanks again for the support you guys are awesome! Chapter 5 is on its way. See you next time!  
> ~Kiera540


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so sorry for the delay! Life just got in the way but have no fear I’m back!
> 
> Disclaimer- I do not own, or claim to own, any of these characters, they all belong to their respected owners, I simply create fanfiction with them. Any similarities to real people or real events is purely coincidental.

After applying a burn cream on his leg to help with the pain and wrapping the cut and burn, Pidge moved onto Shiro’s torso where three long cuts ran diagonally from the right side of his chest down to the left side of his torso. After Pidge cleaned the wounds on a very unhappy Shiro, she wrapped him securely in a way that held the cuts closed, choosing to temporarily forgo stitches for fear of him ripping them open and causing more damage. To appease him Pidge allowed Shiro to tape her eyebrow cut closed and check her leg that she had honestly forgotten about. As Shiro was putting his chest plate back on, a screen popped up on her wrist projection effectively stealing her attention from where she was formerly packing the medical supplies knowing they would probably need them.

“What is it?” Shiro asked noticing her distraction.

“It’s the Yellow Lion’s beacon but it’s strange.” She responded staring at the screen.

“Strange how?” Shiro was confused, Pidge never had trouble with the beacons she had memorized what each of their wavelengths looked like and how they responded. “Could it be interference from the planet?”

“That’s possible, but it’s not the same thing I saw yesterday this almost looks intentional, like it was planned.” She pulled out her laptop again and was typing furiously before Shiro could even think of a response to that, he sat down next to her waiting patiently; they wouldn’t be going anywhere until Pidge figured this out, he knew.

“The beacon itself seems fine, it’s broadcasting normally, none of its wavelengths are jumping around and the code isn’t cracked, it’s almost like there’s something extra inside the beacon.” Pidge said mostly to herself, just thinking aloud. “If I could isolate the extra bit of code I can figure out what it is.” Her typing speed, even though it was thought impossible, picked up even more as she started her task, Shiro watched as letters and numbers flew across the screen as fast as her fingers, he recognized part of Hunks beacon but lacked the technical expertise of Pidge to see the oddity that was there.

“Aha!” She yelled victoriously a moment later, “It was an extra code! I think Hunk is trying to send us a message.”

“Can you read it?”

“Just a—yup, got it; it says—'I’m okay, little bruised. Evil panel. Coordinates in beacon. Hungry.’ Yep that’s Hunk, but what does he mean by ‘evil panel’?”

Shiro just shook his head, “I’m sure he’ll tell us when we get him; can you respond to him to let him know we’re on our way?”

“As long as the signal is still broadcasting on his end I should be able to.” Pidge was already typing a response as she talked, before quickly closing her laptop and storing it in a compartment in Green and jumping to her feet.

“I have the coordinates, are you ready?”

* * *

Coran was singing a song Allura didn’t recognize at the top of his lungs as he worked on restoring the main power, if Allura was ready to murder him, she didn’t say anything. She was sure that it was a lovely song, but all that made it through the coms was an unpleasant screeching sound formed from him being too loud with the mic that close to his mouth.

“Coran?” She called politely through the coms, hoping he could hear her.

“Oh, uh, yes Princess?” He stopped singing abruptly, having not realized that the coms were on and that Allura could actually hear him.

“Could we get the teladuv working? It would surely help us get there a lot faster.” She asked hopeful, at this rate they wouldn’t make it to Thrakzian for another day and she had no intension of leaving the Paladins for that long. She was less worried for their safety and more worried about what trouble they could get into; but still, something about Thrakzian was eating away at her, she felt like she was forgetting an important piece of information about a seemingly unimportant planet.

“No, I’m afraid not, most of the lenses were either cracked or their trajectory was affected. I think we have enough scaltrite to replace the broken ones, but with just the two of us we would reach the planet long before the teladuv was fixed, even at this speed.” Coran replied regretfully, he had already thought of this option and had probably started the work before realizing it was hopeless and moved onto something else.

Allura plopped back down onto the Castle’s floor next to the mice who curled up beside her, “There must be a way for us to get there faster!” she said aloud to them, it seemed that anytime she or Coran came up with a brilliant idea to improve their situation, they always found a snag in the plan after it had hardly started.

“Princess I have another idea!” Coran said as he entered the room again, “I don’t think I can add any more power or get anything else online without a full reboot; which we don’t have time for, so instead I thought that we would pull everything from the lower levels and any level that we’re not using. Pull the lights, heating, water, everything and it would give us a little extra power that we could then turn around and put into the engines or other vital systems.”

“It might just work Coran! All of the Castle has power and we’re hardly using the majority of its levels, and even with just a little extra power it could drastically speed us up!” Allura smiled up at him, it seems that they finally found a work around to their problems; of course, that would mean a full reboot later, but they could handle that.

“I’m going to limit the oxygen down there too so be careful, however I’ll keep the healing pods at full power, the paladins might need them; but I’m going to have to pull power from the weapons and shield systems until we get closer to the planet then I’ll reenable them.” He called already running off to execute his plan; their only plan really, but Allura trusted Coran, his plan did sound possible and if he was convinced that it would work, then the plan would work.

* * *

“How are you feeling?” Lance asked as Keith woke back up, he fell asleep sometime after Lance had treated his leg, the loss of adrenaline from the fight and his fever had left him feeling exhausted and after arguing with Lance for a moment, Keith gave in and slept for a while.

“Like crap. You? How’s your chest?” Keith questioned worriedly, Lance was doing a lot and Keith didn’t want him to overexert himself, he needed to be ready in case they had to meet up with the others or if another one of those creatures came.

“I’m okay, sore, but okay.” He waved a hand in front of him to dismiss Keith’s concerns, “Oh Pidge and Shiro left a little bit ago to find Hunk.” Lance added as an afterthought suddenly remembering Pidge’s quick message coming through while Keith was still asleep.

“Do they have a plan for the creatures?”

“Probably, but they didn’t tell me what it was. Pidge will most likely just zap it and Shiro will Galra-arm punch it until it stops moving. I’m not worried about it.”

“Right,” Keith didn’t seem particularly happy with that answer, but moved on anyways, “and what are we going to do?”

“I was going to ask Pidge what we can do for Blue, if we can get even one of the lions operational it will make all of this a lot easier. She blew me off earlier as they were leaving so I figured I’d wait a few minutes and make sure you didn’t die on me before asking again.”

“Well I’m not dead so ask again.” Keith deadpanned, adjusting his position. His leg burned and he had a terrible headache, but all in all he didn’t feel too bad given the circumstances.

“Hey Pidge, you there?” Lance called through the coms, plopping down next to Keith and handing him his helmet so he could hear as well.

“What is it Lance?” Her voice was coming through in pants as she pushed through the unknown territory to get to Hunk.

“Since we’re stuck here anyways, what can we do to get Blue back online?”

“I can’t see what’s wrong over there, but I’m assuming structurally Blue is all right, so I’d say your best bet would be a full system reboot, but with little or no power you’ll have to do it manually.”

“And how exactly do we do that?”

“One of you is going to have to go outside of Blue to start the process by activating the wiring on the inside of Blue’s right front leg, while the other remains inside for the second part of the process.”

“How do you activate the wiring?” Keith asked, confused by the whole situation, he remembered that there was a hidden panel high up on the lions legs, but he didn’t really know what it was for and he’d never had to do anything with it before.

“It’s simple, all you have to do is transfer some of the power from your suit into the wiring, with the direct burst of electricity it’ll basically wake Blue up allowing the other to start the reboot process. It’s kind of like jump starting a vehicle back on earth.” Pidge was trying to keep this as simple as possible for them so they could avoid a mistake, but even she had to admit it was a confusing process to explain.

“Okay I’ll go—wait what?!” Both Lance and Keith said simultaneously, whipping their heads to look at each other, their matching expressions full of disbelief towards each other.

“Hash this out then get back to me.” Pidge sighed, wanting no part of that cat fight.

“What do you mean you’ll go? You literally just woke up from being passed out! I’ll go.” Lance started fully prepared to duct tape Keith to the pilot’s chair to keep him inside.

“No, absolutely not. You’re too hurt, I’ll go.” Keith countered, prepared to do the same to Lance, if he thought that Keith would actually let him outside with a chest wound like that he had another thing coming.

“I’ll be fine. My lion, my rules. I’m going outside.” With that Lance rose to his feet and opened the security door before being grabbed by Keith behind him.

“Lance! We don’t have time for this! The reboot process will take long enough as it is. Bottom line, I’m in better fighting shape than you should it come to that out there. I can take another hit, you can’t!” Keith didn’t leave a chance for Lance to respond before he pushed past him and out the door limping slightly, as he closed the door behind him he got a full completely-pissed off-Spanish-Lance glare before the door cut off what probably would have been some colorful words.

“Okay Pidge I’m outside, heading to the panel now. Walk me through it.”

“Okay first you have to…”

* * *

 

Pidge was practically skipping as she and Shiro exited Green to once again get Hunk, with actual coordinates this time it should go over much better. Although Pidge did keep her eyes glued to the screen on her wrist to watch their coordinates and their destinations coordinates to ensure they’re no sudden jumps again.

“Pidge I was thinking about what you said about the creature that attacked Lance and Keith and how it could change on a molecular level.”

“Yeah, what about it?” She asked, raising her voice slightly so Shiro would be able to hear her since his coms were still broken.

“How do you think it was able to change into me? How did it even know to look like me?”  
“I was thinking about that also, and honestly I don’t know. We’ve never been on this planet before and we haven’t really been close to it before now. I know it seems unlikely, but it could have just been a random guess on the creature’s part.”

“No, no that’s not possible. Keith would know the difference as soon as he opened the security door. Any other theories?”

“My only other theory is that the creature somehow saw you first then went to see Keith; one problem though—that would only allow it to copy your physical appearance. Yet somehow it knew your genetic makeup enough to copy your DNA which would allow it to enter Blue, the only way I could see that happening was if it got ahold of your blood somehow, which I don’t see as possible because the Black Lion would never allow that thing inside to get to you.”

Shiro hummed in response, he hated the fact that there was a creature just randomly wandering around with his face as a mask of its true form, and if it could turn into him, it might also be able to turn into any of the others. The certain chaos that would bring during any of their reunions made him nervous as they continued on to Hunk’s position, but would it really be Hunk that was waiting for them?

Pidge’s voice pulled him out of his thoughts as she answered someone on the coms, Shiro assumed it was Lance, he didn’t hear anything so that meant it couldn’t be Keith and if it was Hunk or Allura she would have told him immediately.

“What is it Lance?” She called confirming his theory, she glanced at Shiro to ensure that he had heard her and at least partially knew what was going on.

He listened closely to Pidge’s voice to decipher the conversation, as it went on and the slight bit he received from Keith was all he needed to know—they were trying to get Blue operational. A smart move, but he didn’t know if it was possible, they didn’t have much equipment inside of their lions, and without Pidge personally being there or the Castle’s equipment he wasn’t very confident that they could get it flying. He had to hand it to them, however, he was proud of them for at least trying to be productive instead of just sitting around.

“Okay I’ll go—wait what?!” Shiro and Pidge winced slightly as that was yelled through the coms loud enough for Shiro to hear Lance’s voice clearly through Keith’s helmet.

“Hash this out then get back to me.” An annoyed Pidge sighed before going back to eye the screen on her wrist. A few quiet minutes passed as they were supposedly hashing out who was going to go outside of Blue, in that time Pidge explained the full situation to Shiro. After explaining she transferred Hunks coordinates to him and put him in charge of watching them so she could put her full attention into helping Keith and Lance.

“Okay Pidge I’m outside, heading to the panel now. Walk me through it.” Keith’s voice came a second later.

“Okay first you have to…” That was the last thing Shiro was able to hear as she launched into the steps Keith needed to follow. He moved his left arm to hover just behind her as a precaution—an idea that turned out to be a smart move as exactly five steps later Pidge nearly faceplanted from not paying enough attention to her feet, too engrossed by her explanation, Shiro caught her before she could come into contact with the planet’s surface. She thanked him as she was straightened back up by him and was thankful when his hand continued to hover by her as they simultaneously made their way to Hunk and tried to fix Blue.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoyed that! Again, sorry for the delay, but don’t worry this story is continuing. Chapter 6 coming up! See you next time!  
> ~Kiera540


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize once again about the delay, I might have accidentally given myself a small plot hole that required a quick rewrite of a section, but don’t worry it’s all fixed now. I might have also gotten slightly distracted by season 7. 
> 
> Disclaimer- I do not own, or claim to own, any of these characters, they all belong to their respected owners, I simply create fanfiction with them. Any similarities to real people or real events is purely coincidental.

“They’re on the move again, we should strike now.” Morana said to Dearil as they spoke privately away from the rest of the group.

“No, Omisha has not yet returned, we must wait for him.”

“We’ve waited long enough! That fool is so late he probably got himself killed or captured at this point.” Morana tried again, she didn’t really like Omisha and being out in the open like this so much made her worry.

“I said no! Besides why move now and only get the two of them? They’ll have to regroup eventually and with what we did to their beasts they’re not going anywhere, they will have to call for a pickup which would bring even more to us. We will wait.” Dearil growled out to his second-in-command, he did value her opinion, but she was too hasty.

“Fine, but at least let us return to a safer place, we’ve been in the open for far too long. They need to rest properly before they use the beast form again.” She gestured to the rest of the group, it was true, their Beast Form was their strongest form, but it isn’t their natural form and it had a large strain on the body so they can only use it for a limited time.

“Very well. Ensure that Kritanta looks over everyone when we return.” They both headed back to the group and informed them of their decision. All but one of them, sprinted away lead by Morana easily seen by her long white hair shining brightly in the sun.

“What are you thinking?” Persefoni asked Dearil.

“It’s nothing, let’s go.” Dearil tried to brush him running slower behind the rest so that Persefoni could keep up.

“Try again. I may not be your second-in-command anymore thanks to my injury, but I know you better than the rest. Talk to me. What is it?” Persefoni made his eyes glow, not in a challenge to his power, but to show his seriousness. Despite his terrible injury not long ago, his golden eyes still glowed as bright as they did before that day.

“I’m just worried about Omisha, this is the first time we’ve sent him by himself, I fear that he might have done something reckless and alerted all of them to our presence here.”

“We’ll know soon enough. What we need to do now is get back, regroup, and come up with a plan.” He assured his leader, turning his attention back to their surroundings after Dearil hummed a reply.

* * *

“Are you all hooked up now?” Pidge asked after walking Keith through the first step of the process of rebooting Blue.

“Yeah, just like you told me, now what?” Keith responded, his legs were braced against Blue supporting his weight while his right arm was gripping above him to keep him in place, his left arm was hooked up with Blue’s wiring the way Pidge had instructed. Keith had to time his movements carefully, letting go with his right arm and using his jetpack instead so that he could use both of his arms, but his jetpack only lasted for so long meaning he had to move quickly and put his right arm back before his burst was over, if he didn’t he would risk falling to the ground a good ways below him.

“Okay now all you have to do is transfer some of the power from your suit into Blue to basically jumpstart her. Lance, once she has power start the reboot process on your end.”

“You got it!” Lance cheered through the coms, he was ridiculously happy given the circumstances and it all had to do with the fact that Blue would be back online soon…hopefully, the reboot process did take some time and he also knew it would take longer than usual since Blue had used up the remainder of her main power electrocuting that creature. Lance shuddered as he remembered that thing, the creature that looked to be straight out of one of the horror films he used to watch with his siblings when his parents were out of the house, how it had effortlessly pinned Keith down and was completely unfazed when Lance blasted it.

“But how can that be?” Lance said to himself thinking out loud, “My blast practically is electricity, if Blues blast took it down my blast should have at least hurt it some.”

“Okay, transferring power now.” Keith’s voice cut through Lance’s thoughts abruptly reminding him of the current situation.

“Standing by for manual reboot.” Lance said shaking himself slightly to fully refocus on his task, glancing out of the cockpit he scowled at the fact that he couldn’t see Keith from his position and had to rely solely on what he could hear through the coms. The said coms were mainly just static as Keith transferred the power from his suit into Blue’s wiring, a deep rumbling sound similar to that of thunder started to give Lance hope that Blue was coming back as the lights in the cockpit slowly grew brighter. His hands hovered over the controls just about to start the reboot when Keith’s voice made him freeze to his core.

“Pidge I think somethings wrong, there’s-AAAARRRRGGGGGG!!”

“KEITH!!” Lance was the first one to respond seeing a bright flash coming from the direction that his red counterpart should have been. Fear clawed at Lance as he recalled Keith’s strained and panicked voice, a tone not often heard from the Red Paladin, his body wanted to remain motionless, but his mind screamed at him to move and the next thing Lance knew his helmet was on and he was flying out of Blue to where Keith last was.

* * *

“KEITH! LANCE!” Both Shiro and Pidge were yelling at the top of their lungs in the hopes that one of them would answer.

“OKAY! OKAY! We can’t think about that right now! Keith is fine, he has to be! That idiot probably just fell from where he was, right? We just have to focus on finding Hunk and trust Lance to deal with it, RIGHT?!” The look in Pidge’s eyes might have made her look slightly insane but it was warranted given the situation so Shiro decided to ignore that for now; she was right after all, they were too far away to be of any help to Keith or Lance and they couldn’t just keep standing there, those creatures could be lurking near them right now just waiting for the pair to drop their guard- like it was right now.

“You’re right Pidge. Of course, you’re right. Hunk is our top priority right now.” Shiro forced himself to relax, he really needed a clear head in this situation, from the sound of Keith’s voice he was probably unconscious so that meant he wouldn’t answer, and Lance would be so absorbed in the situation over there to even think of answering them, so screaming into the void was going to get them nowhere. They need to move. Now.

“He’s more than that Shiro. I’m running out of ideas! Hunk is the actual engineer, he might just be the only person who can get the Lions flying again!”

“Then let’s go get Hunk!”

The two Paladins were now flying across the ground injuries completely forgotten as adrenaline fueled their movements, their situation was growing more desperate by the minute. The only hope they had was to get everyone together before someone either lost their life or their mind, Pidge being the most likely for the latter. Shiro was lost in his thoughts so much that it took him a few minutes to realize that the annoying, incessant beeping that was coming from Pidge’s wrist meant that they were nearing Hunk’s location and that he should really be paying more attention to their surroundings to look for both enemies and the Yellow Lion.

“There!” Pidge called pointing to her left, and sure enough, there laid the one and only Yellow Lion, the sight before them made both Shiro and Pidge screech to a halt.

“Wait what? Huh? How?” Pidge’s mouth hung slightly open unable to decide on a sentence so she just jumbled them all together and hoped that it was at least partially coherent.

Before them stood, without a doubt, the Yellow Lion in…practically perfect condition.

“What the heck is going on?!” Pidge yelled utterly and completely confused, she knew that Hunk’s message had said that he was okay, but he was so okay that it made everyone else look even worse.

“Let’s just go inside.” Shiro said calmly pushing a heavily breathing Green Paladin forward gently, her insane look was returning and he could pretty much hear the gears spinning out of control in her head just by standing next to her. Once inside the main compartment of the Yellow Lion they removed their helmets and knocked on Hunk’s pilot door which was immediately opened.

“Oh hey-hey guys!” Hunk said cheerfully spinning around in his pilots chair to face them, “You found me! Pidge why do you look so crazy?”

“Me? Why do I look crazy? I was just busy being worried out of my mind about you, trying to fix everyone’s Lions, and having to wonder around on an alien planet with unknown creatures to finally make it to you to find you perfectly fine and eating a sandwich!” Pidge grew more and more animated in her movements dramatically throwing her arms around during her rant, trying her best to sound angry but Hunk and Shiro saw right through it to see her true emotions of pure relief and happiness of finding Hunk okay and in high spirits.

“So, sleep deprivation. Got it.” Pidge’s eyebrow twitched at Hunk’s smile as Shiro chuckled behind her as they continued play arguing for a minute while Hunk finished his sandwich and Pidge stole some of his food before they launched into a conversation to catch Hunk up to speed with what was going on.

* * *

“Sir I have a report!”

“What is it?” Dearil growled out to the young scout before him.

“The bomb inside the blue beast just went off!”

“What?! Why?” The bombs were supposed to go off at the same time and only three people had access to the detonation controls.

“We don’t know, it just went off a minute ago. Would you like us to investigate?”

“No don’t. Tell Morana and Persefoni that I want to speak to them first and have everyone else await orders.”

“Yes, sir!” With that the scout disappeared with the incredible speed they were known for, scouts were always out watching every little detail, they weren’t quite as strong as some of the others, but their speed more than made up for it and their ability to hold their top speed for a long time made them key assets on this planet as the only means of transportation was on foot.

\--------------

“That’s a problem.” Persefoni stated flatly.

“You don’t say?” Morana outright mocked him

“And it’s not our only one. Omisha still hasn’t returned, we have yet to infiltrate the yellow beast, and our long-range scanners our picking up a large ship approaching the planet sooner than we expected.” Dearil moved on ignoring their banter, this op was not turning out the way they were expecting as the number of variables kept increasing, he sighed out of all of their years of doing this it had been a long time since one was this problematic.

“Oh forget Omisha, he’s just a rookie that most likely got overeager and made a premature move.” Morana rolled her eyes and threaded her hands through her hair to move it out of her face. She really didn’t like Omisha.

“You’re missing the point. A premature move at this stage would blow the whole operation, the only reason we’ve been able to do this is with the element of surprise and by following a carefully laid plan. If one move is made out of place it’ll blow everything regardless of whether Omisha lives or not.” Persefoni scolded her before facing Dearil, “Do you think that Omisha could have gotten into some trouble and detonated the bomb for his own purposes or perhaps as a warning to us?”

“Hopefully not living.” The white haired human clad grumbled under her breath as she plopped down onto a chair that just looked oh so lonely next to her, her main thing was attack it was up to the leader and former second in command to strategize.

“The only three people who can detonate the bombs are in this room, and if he needed to warn us he would have just contacted the nearest scout and had them relay the message back to us.”

“We’re the only ones who can activate the bombs from a distance that’s true, but the bombs can be set off by activating them in person.”

“Hmm. Can you think of anything as to why he would do that for personal reasons?”

“Only if he made a premature move and decided to have some fun, or perhaps got lead into a trap by either his target being stronger than he thought or by his target having full knowledge that he was there and ambushed him causing Omisha to set off the bomb in order to escape.”

“Regardless you believe our cover is blown?”

“There’s a strong possibility of that but it’s hard to say for certain. You did give him some of the Black One’s blood when you took him with you to show him how to do it in person before sending him off to the Blue One, didn’t you?”

“Yes, why?”

“Omisha could have used the Black’s blood to transform himself into the Black before making his move, meaning our cover isn’t blown.”

“That’s possible, but it still doesn’t explain why he hasn’t returned.”

“Well he is young and the forced entrance on the beast takes a lot of energy and the fight that would have happened between him and the Blue One could have exhausted his power causing the delay.” Persefoni smirked proudly at Dearil as he was successfully able to answer all of the questions thrown at him.

“Well you’ve been busy.” Dearil returned his smirk, everything that the blond headed human clad had said was very possible and would coincide with Omisha’s personality if he didn’t follow the orders he was given.

“When you’re injured and are benched from missions you’ll realize that you suddenly have a lot of time on your hands and your mind just won’t shut up.”

“Well with all of this new found time have you thought of an idea for the sooner-than-expected ship headed this way?”

“Well actually I was thinking that we could—”

“Sir, reporting!” A scout called as he unceremoniously busted through the door, this was a different one than before and was slightly older but obviously didn’t care about rules or regulations.

“What is it?! We are never to be disturbed while in a meeting during an op!” Dearil’s voice came out menacingly and his eyes flashed their famous red showing not just his anger and annoyance but also his powerful beast within.

“Omisha has returned. Just thought that you should know.” The tanned scout had gone ghostly white before stuttering out his report and bolting out of the door while his leader was distracted. The three remaining members stared at each other for a moment before racing out of the door themselves to see a figure stumbling towards them and as he approached they saw that it was none other than Omisha who had finally returned from his mission of collecting the blood from the Blue One.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please allow me to apologize for the delay one last time. As always, I hope you enjoyed this chapter and if you see a mistake just let me know and I’ll fix it! More is on the way! Please try to keep the comment section as spoiler free as possible, thank you! See you next time!  
> ~Kiera540


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nothing to say, just so sorry about the long wait! I hope you enjoy!
> 
> Disclaimer- I do not own, or claim to own, any of these characters, they all belong to their respected owners, I simply create fanfiction with them. Any similarities to real people or real events is purely coincidental.

“Was it something about the plants? No, that isn’t right either.” Allura sighed as the answer she was chasing once again evaded her. The Castle was moving faster since Coran diverted power to the main engines, but something about this mysterious planet they were desperately trying to get to kept nagging at the back of her mind.

“Still can’t remember, Princess?” Coran asked from his station, he had been staring at the navigation ever since he diverted the power fearing that even the slightest push or pull would throw them off course. Allura swore she hadn’t seen him blink in ages, and was starting to worry that his eyes were going to pop out.

“Well it has been 10,000 years so I was bound to forget some things, I don’t know why, but this just seems like an important detail.”

“It has been 10,000 years so maybe what you’re worried about isn’t even a problem anymore.” Coran actually glanced at her then, his voice soft trying to reassure her. He didn’t remember anything about this planet, the only reason he knew its name was because he was looking at all of the planets in the area before they had started their ‘simple-just-a-routine-mission’ nothing had caught his attention as being serious, but he trusted Allura and her worrying was starting to affect him as well.

“Perhaps.” She didn’t sound convinced, but for now, the Princess’s fears would have to wait. They was no possible way they could get any information, they would simply have to wait and assess the situation once they arrived.

* * *

“On a scale from one to ten, how bad do you think it would be if we-”

“At least a twenty Pidge.” Hunk didn’t even let her finish, he knew what she was thinking and had no interest in trying it.

“Okay, but if we adjust the-”

“Then we’d have to sacrifice something else. If we get the weapons, then no stabilizers; engines, but no controls; shields, but no temperature regulations.”

“There’s got to be a way to get all of the above. We can’t just pick and choose what systems are online we’d never make it off the planet.” Pidge frustratingly plopped onto her back, every time they found one answer they’d find another problem.

Shiro was hardly paying attention to them, as was agreed, he was listening for Keith through his helmet and for Lance through Pidge’s helmet. Originally the Green and Yellow Paladins were against this idea, but they knew that if anyone could get the Lions flying again it would be them, so in the end they resigned themselves to arguing about all of the ways, whether impractical or not, that they could get the Lions going while Shiro focused on Lance and Keith’s wellbeing and would inform them when he got news.

“Yellow is in the best condition, maybe if we get her fully operational we could use her to get the others going as well.” Hunk offered as Pidge continued to groan while rolling around on the floor.

“It’s that or we have to wait for the Castle of Lions to get here and pick us up, but we have no way of knowing how long that will take.” Pidge had finally stopped rolling around, even though she would always claim that it was a part of her thinking process, it was time that they actually started working. “Let’s start with the coms, I’m tired of yelling so Shiro can hear me and I want my helmet back.”

Hunk chuckled as they dragged their bodies up to start the long process of repairing the Lions without the proper tools, separated on an alien planet, and under an extreme time crunch to just get the hell off this supposed to be deserted planet. Yep, this was going to be a long day.

* * *

Only one thing could be clearly seen in the jumble of thoughts racing through Lance’s mind, and that was; Keith.

Lance was pretty sure that he nearly faceplanted on his way out, but nobody needed to know that. The cut on his leg burned and his chest ached although, he couldn’t tell if it was from his wound or from the fear that was tearing through his body at the thought of what had happened to Keith. In all honesty, he didn’t know what had happened he had seen a flash of light and heard Keith scream and that was all he needed to get his body moving. The possible danger that he was running straight into didn’t even register in his head as he sprinted the best he could to where he saw the flash.

“KEITH!” Lance shouted as his body came into view, “Keith what happened?! Are you okay?”

Lance dropped down next to Keith jarring his leg a little, but he couldn’t care less at this point, Keith appeared to be unconscious. With a shaking hand Lance put his hand on Keith’s chest and his heart nearly shot out of his chest at the relief he felt when he could feel the steady rise and fall of Keith’s chest. His breaths were a little shallow but nothing to worry about, Lance carefully ran his fingers along Keith’s body to check for injuries, his left arm had some minor burns while his left hand was a little more serious, but it looked like the Paladin armor had done its job.

Lance noticed that the shield projector on his wrist looked more damaged than he could repair, but he was slowly starting to piece together what had happened. Judging from the flash of light and the burns, Lance concluded that there was an explosion of some sort and when he looked up at Blue’s leg and saw the black marks there it only reinforced his assumption, moving on to his wrist, the damage on the shield told him that Keith had probably at the last second put up his shield and the close range of the explosion had over-powered the shield and that caused the damaged to his wrist projector and his arm itself.

All of this was added together in Lance’s mind while his fingers continued to roam, Lance was confident that his theory was correct, and since he didn’t find any other injuries there was only one thing left to do- wake Keith up. Now Lance had seen Keith in the morning when he would stumble out of his room looking like a zombie before making a bee line for the fridge, and everyone in the whole Castle of Lions knew not to even attempt to talk to Keith until he was at least halfway through his breakfast, any sooner and God help that person. Long story short- Keith was a grouchy person, more so than usual Lance’s brain added, in the mornings so waking him up now should be just great.

“Keith, buddy, I need you to wake up.” Lance tried, he figured if he was gentle then maybe Keith wouldn’t kill him when he woke up. Keith, on the other hand, didn’t even flinch at Lance’s voice.

“Keith come on, we can’t stay out here and I am not carrying you back inside Blue.” Lance started to shake him hoping to break through his slumber, Keith’s hand twitched slightly at the movement that his body was making when he wasn’t the person in control of it.

“Come on, wake up!” Lance yelled at him, panic was starting to seep into his previously calm and gentle voice, Lance physically couldn’t carry Keith back inside Blue and them being out here was starting to make Lance nervous.

“Keith, I swear I will cut off your mullet right here and now if you don’t wake up this exact second!” And that did the trick, Keith’s eyes shot open and he would have bolted upright if Lance hadn’t anticipated his reaction and held him down, the last thing they needed was for Keith to hurt himself more than he already was by shooting into a standing position before his body was ready.

“Lance? What happened?” Keith’s voice sounded groggy, but just the fact that he was talking again was enough to push Lance over the edge as tears formed in his eyes at the pure relief of knowing that Keith and everyone else were alive.

“Well how do I put this? You got blown up.” Lance used his famous humor to try to diffuse the tension in their bodies.

“I—What?!” Keith’s eyes went wide at his statement as he tried to force his brain to remember what was a pretty significant event in his life before coming up with a blank.

“I’ll explain more later, can you move? We need to get back inside Blue.” Lance returned to his gentle self after Keith nodded slowly and together they managed to get Keith to stand. His legs were shaking from the shock of this whole ordeal, but other than that he was actually pretty good considering the circumstances.

Together Lance and Keith managed to hobble back inside Blue without any incidents and, after securing Keith in the pilot’s chair, Lance was surprised to hear Shiro’s voice when he activated his coms. After explaining that he was using Pidge’s helmet to be able hear him, Lance launched into a report of what had happened.

* * *

“Where the hell have you been?” Dearil growled at Omisha as him and his two companions had gone out to meet Omisha halfway.

“Never mind that now, let’s get you to the healers.” Persefoni threw one of Omisha’s arms around his shoulders and helped him to get inside their headquarters, “He can’t tell us anything if he passes out or dies on us.” He added when Dearil threw a glare at him for shoving his valid question aside. He sighed, because of course Persefoni was right, and walked back inside ahead of them while Morana trailed behind them.

“Bhishak, Kritanta!” Dearil called the two present healers as their small group reentered. Bhishak was the apprentice of Kritanta, despite the similarities in their age, there was a fairly large gap in their abilities, but to be fair Kritanta was the best healer that they had. Kritanta was a very lively person and her bright purple hair perfectly reflected her spirit as she bounded forward to see what her leader wanted. Bhishak was much more laid back, his light blue hair proved that, as he waltzed to stand next to his mentor. At first glance you would think that their ages were reversed, Bhishak was a few feet taller than his mentor and his extremely laid back attitude made him seem older than he was, especially when compared to his mentor who pretty much bounced off the walls any chance that she got, even now she continuously moved her weight around on her feet similar to how an impatient child, who couldn’t stand the thought of being still, would.

“Come into the command center and tend to Omisha.” Dearil was too slow to cover his ears as Kritanta squealed with delight at the fact that Omisha had returned, and more importantly the fact that she would get to go into the command center that was usually reserved for those of a higher rank. Bhishak sighed at his mentors’ antics as he followed behind her and their leader into the room Dearil and the other two higher ups had exited out of a few moments earlier.

Dearil, Persefoni, and Morana waited as patiently as they could while the two medics looked over Omisha whispering to themselves before Bhishak was sent over with a report a moment later.

“Well?” Dearil asked him as the blue haired medic made his way to stand in front of the three of them.

“He doesn’t have too many surface wounds, but internally he’s pretty beat up. He said that he was electrocuted while he was inside the beast and he had to use the Ash Illusion to make them think that they killed him while he made his escape.”

“The Ash Illusion?”

“Them?”

“Electrocuted?” The three commanders all asked at once, before Morana waved her arms and butt in with her question first, “Since when can Omisha use the Ash Illusion technique?”

“He’s been working on it with Kalabhiti I believe, and a good thing too. If they didn’t believe that the electrocution had turned him into ash Omisha would probably be dead by now. Although the electricity and the technique did take a lot out of him which forced him to walk back instead of using the Beast Mode which would answer for at least part of his missing time.”

“You said ‘them’ again. What do you mean by that?” Dearil asked his question next.

“Omisha said that there were two of them in the beast he was assigned to. He did get the blood he was assigned to get though.” Bhishak handed Dearil a vile of blood.

“How did he get the blood if they were aware of his presence and even electrocuted him?” Persefoni finally had the opportunity to ask.

“I’m unsure about that. From my understanding, Omisha already had the blood in his possession before he was attacked, the story doesn’t entirely line up, but that could be because he’s hit his physical and mental limit from overusing our techniques and is having trouble putting his tale into words.”

“Understandable. Did he say anything about a bomb of any kind?” Dearil questioned, he had to know if Omisha had activated it or if something else had caused it.

“Bomb?” Bhishak look confused, “He didn’t say anything about a bomb, but again that could be the exhaustion.”

Dearil glanced over at Omisha and seeing the vacant look in his eyes told him that it would be pointless to even attempt to talk to him about it, Kritanta’s hands were glowing green signaling that she had started to heal Omisha, Dearil looked back to the medic in front of him.

“Heal him and let him rest, when you can, get a full report from him or send him directly to me.”

“Yes, Sir.” Bhishak said as they walked away. Once they were out of ear shot he sighed in relief now that his “interrogation” was over, before returning to relay the order to his mentor.

“Morana, get me Kalabhiti and Methuselah.” Dearil ordered.

“What’s your plan?” Persefoni questioned.

“We need to find out exactly what’s going on, I’m going to send those two as captains with the scouts to find out.”

“If it’s just recon send Ernesh instead of Methuselah and save him for when we actually make our move.”

“Methuselah is the only one who can get inside those beasts undetected, I can’t risk anyone else getting electrocuted. He’s going.”

“Fine, but he won’t like a strictly recon mission.”

Persefoni was proven correct when Methuselah immediately groaned in boredom after Dearil had explained their mission.

“Oh quit your whining.” Kalabhiti snapped at him.

“Why do I have to do this mission? My forte is infiltration, I’ll give you that, but it’s infiltration to retrieve something or to take someone out I won’t even know what to do if all I’m supposed to do is watch for movement.” Methuselah ignored the man standing next to him and addressed Dearil instead.

“It’s the exact same process. As I recall you used to be strictly recon when you were still training under your mentor.”

“That was years ago!” The natural grey-haired infiltration master protested.

“Are you saying that you’ve lost your touch?” Dearil smirked at him, he knew he had hit the nail on the head with that comment, if there was one thing that Methuselah hated it was being underestimated.

“That’s obviously the case. I guess I’ll go alone, he’ll just slow me down anyways.” The green-haired speedster Kalabhiti sneered at him.

“Shut it Greenie!”

“You’re just mad because you’re the only person out of all of us with grey hair.”

Dearil let them argue because he knew it would get them fired up for the mission, and after a few more taunts and insults he then decided it was time for him to step in before fists were raised.

“Enough. Kalabhiti the Yellow One is the furthest from us, take your pick of the scout teams and the go watch them and see if you can’t get blood from the Yellow One too, that’s the only one we don’t have. Methuselah, take a team and go to the Blue One, figure out what’s going on then report back.”

“Yes, Sir!” They said simultaneously, before glancing at Persefoni to see if he had anything to add.

Persefoni shrugged then said, “In order for this to work the best way it can, we’re counting on your speed Kalabhiti as you’re the fastest of us all, as for Methuselah it’s your observation and maybe even your infiltration skills. Good luck.”

Kalabhiti and Methuselah both nodded before turning around swiftly to go find their teams.

* * *

“Well good news.” Shiro called, “Keith’s a little beat up but he’s okay.”

Hunk and Pidge’s bodies both sagged in relief at the news they had been waiting to hear.

“Great! I think we got the coms working for everyone, go ahead and try it.” Pidge informed Shiro. After explaining it to Lance, Shiro switched helmets and sure enough, it worked perfectly.

“Good, now give me back my helmet!” Pidge held her newly reclaimed helmet to her chest while Shiro walked Lance through the steps of applying the burn cream that Lance found in their emergency medical kit.

“Okay now that that’s settled and everyone’s heart attack is over we need to get back to finding a way to get the Lion’s flying or be able to do anything really.” Hunk said as he turned back to Pidge.

Pidge felt the need to stroke her helmet for some bizarre reason as she thought, “Okay what if we…” Hunk almost took Pidge’s helmet and whapped her upside the head with it. Almost.

“Scale of one to ten, what do you think?”

“At least a thirty. You’re going in the wrong direction Pidge! That was even worse than you’re idea earlier!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m hoping that the longer chapter makes up for the atrocious wait time. So sorry, please forgive me! Chapter 8 is in progress and hopefully won’t take nearly as long. Also I’m terrible at chapter names that’s why all of my chapters are called “Chapter #” so if you have any ideas for names I would love to hear them and use them (I will give credit for the names). See you next time!  
> ~Kiera540


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So sorry for the wait! I sincerely hope that everyone enjoys this chapter! Please leave a like or comment so I may improve. Also, to those who celebrate it, Happy Thanksgiving! For those who don’t celebrate it, Happy Random Week in November!
> 
>  
> 
> Disclaimer- I do not own, or claim to own, any of these characters, they all belong to their respected owners, I simply create fanfiction with them. Any similarities to real people or real events is purely coincidental.

“Did I or did I not, specifically say that I should have been the one to go outside?! How do you even manage to cause an explosion from just the wiring in Blue?! You better not have hurt Blue! No, the almighty-hero-Keith just had to go and nearly blow himself up and give everyone heart attacks! Do you realize that you almost killed all of the Paladins of Voltron in one swoop, from the heart attacks we had?! The Galra must love you right now! Those creatures too! Speaking of which, one could have come and gotten you, or me, or both of us!” Keith had yet to see Lance take a breath as he vented all of his pent-up worry while Keith couldn’t run away.

“Not to mention the fact that—Oh holy quiznak!” The second round of Lance’s rant was cut off by a sound that no one was expecting to hear at that time. His accusing and worry filled eyes turned into pure surprise as he stared, slack-jawed at Keith’s equally unbelieving face, except Keith had one other emotion showing; relief. Pure unfiltered relief.

Blue had just thrummed to life, on the outside her eyes shined proudly as she rose into a sitting position, ready to go.

“H-how?” Lance question, he thought that whatever had happened with Keith had caused more problems with Blue, he had never imagined that she would actually come online from that.

“Uh, Pidge?” Keith called through the coms, just like Lance he didn’t have a clue as to how this was possible, but if anyone on the Voltron team knew, it would be their resident expert.

“What now?” Pidge sounded absolutely exhausted, but that was about to change in just a moment; making sure he was on the open channel, so everyone would hear him he delivered the long-awaited news, “Blue just came online.”

Keith heard a crash before relieved laughter from Pidge, cheering and whooping from Hunk, and an amused chuckle from Shiro filled the coms.

“Okay, that’s great and all,” Hunk managed to get out once his cheering started to die down, “but how? Last we heard something tried to blow you up, and we knew you were okay, but how did that help Blue?”

“Wait Lance you said that Keith’s left arm and hand are burned right?” Pidge was onto something while everyone else still remained confused, but they knew better than to interrupt, knowing that Pidge would eventually answer the unspoken questions.

“Yeah, his hand is worse that his arm, and his shield projector is broken.” Lance answered while impatiently shuffling his feet.

“So, even though he was only about three feet away from the explosion, the only damaged he received was on the arm that was actually inside of Blue’s wiring, correct?”

“Yeah, and his leg, but he already had that before going out.” Okay when you put it like that, it does sound suspicious.

“When the explosion happened did you see fire or just light? Was there a fire in Blue when you were getting Keith, Lance?”

“I remember a blinding flash of light, almost like it was lightning. Now that you mention it, I never did see a fire, there were black marks on Blue’s leg though.”

“Like lightning, eh? Well, what if it wasn’t an actual bomb, but an electromagnetic bomb? That would explain the great flash of light, and the minimal damaged to Keith, also the Lions have the ability to turn that sudden surge of power from the ‘bomb’ into useable power for them.” Pidge explained as the pieces started to connect in everyone’s mind. Lance had to admit that it did make sense, even though he was scared out of his mind, body, and soul when Keith was “blown up” he really did have minimal damage. Someone who was that close to a bomb would have had their arm blown off, not slightly burned.

“That still leaves a few questions,” Shiro piped in, he had looked lost in thought a second ago, but he proved that he was still listening to the conversation, “one, are we sure it was a type of bomb? Two, how did it get there? Three, when did it get there? And four, are there any others?”

Everyone fell silent as the Black Paladin’s words hit them, from the relief of Keith’s wellbeing, and the pride of Blue having been able to power up, those crucial questions had escaped everyone’s mind. Shiro once again proved his vast military experience and his leadership abilities with his insight into the situation that the rest of the Paladins had temporarily forgotten.

“Maybe we shouldn’t try to power up the Lions anymore, if there are more like Shiro said, we may not be as lucky the next time around.” Hunk was the first person to break the silence, he didn’t want to admit it but powering up the Lions might actually be their worst option now.

“Not necessarily. If I can have access to Blue, I can program her to scan Yellow and once we know what we’re working with, we can then easily deactivate it or work around it.” Pidge had successfully managed to restore their hope.

“Well you guys heard Pidge, get Blue over here!” Hunk cheered.

“Hang on a minute.” Shiro spoke again, “Lance, Keith, we’ve left Red, Black, and Green alone for a while, go check on them and then come to us so Pidge can scan Yellow.”

“Copy that!” Lance yelled through the coms before sitting in the pilots chair to check his systems.

“Well it looks like we have the majority of our systems back online, but we don’t have flight capabilities. We’ll have to go the old-fashioned way and just run to each of them.” Keith informed the rest of the team as Lance, at first, slowly started to move Blue before increasing the speed.

“Red is the closest so we’ll go there first, then we’ll head to Black, after that is Green, and then we’ll be on our way to you guys in Yellow.” Lance and Keith said after a moment planning between them.

“Alright sounds good. Be careful, and don’t leave Blue. Just look at the Lions and make sure they aren’t any worse than when we left them.” Shiro sternly told them.

* * *

“Well that’s not good.” Methuselah said as he watched the blue beast suddenly come to life.

“I thought it was deactivated.” The scout, Yamajit, to his left pointed out.

“It was. Or at least it was supposed to be.”

“It hasn’t moved yet, should we try to infiltrate it?”

“No, don’t approach it. When we infiltrated the Black One it still had partial power and tried to wake its owner up, causing us to injure the owner more than we normally would to keep him unconscious. If this one has power, then that means they’re most likely both awake and the defensive systems will be online.”

“That may be, but you could still enter it.”

“I’m flattered, but I have no intentions of getting electrocuted, besides our orders are recon only. You can do Marking, right? Go Mark it and we’ll follow at a distance.”

Yamajit rolled his eyes, but cautiously approach the Blue One anyways, Marking was a difficult technique to learn and not many could do it, as for those who could, no way was the same. This tracking expert’s way of Marking involved attaching three tiny objects onto the object or person to be tracked, anyone who saw them would think they were seeds or something else from the planet’s surface that happened to get stuck there, but for Yamajit he could always sense these seed-like objects, so he would always know where his target was.

“We good?” Methuselah wondered aloud when he returned.

“Yeah, I had no problems and I sense them clearly.” Yamajit ran a hand through his mostly brown, think, and long hair. His father had hazelnut-brown hair, but his mother had very vibrant red hair, so it left him having brown hair with wild red streaks throughout it.

“Good. Now we wait, once it starts moving, we’ll follow it a distance using your Marking to ensure that if its sensors are working they won’t be able to detect us. Inform your team, and send someone back to report to Leader.”

“Right.” With that the mixed haired tracker left the grey-haired stealth expert to tell his team about their plan, while Methuselah watched the beast for anymore movement.

After a couple of minutes Yamajit returned to Methuselah, “We’re all good, everyone knows the plan and I sent Menahem back to Leader.”

“Choosing her was a good idea, just in time though it looks like they’re getting ready to move.” Methuselah started signaling to the rest of the scouts to get ready, once the Blue One started moving, so would they.

* * *

“Come on, keep up!” Kalabhiti called over his shoulder as they ran, he was only going about half of his maximum speed, but for everyone else it was pretty much a sprint.

“If I may, Sir, remember that no one is as fast as you are.” Kalayavan, the captain of this scout team, reminded him.

Kalabhiti glanced back at the navy haired man beside him, even he was starting to pant from holding their current speed for so long. The green haired speedster remembered a long lecture from Persefoni about how if he’s working in a group, he needs to use teamwork and how they won’t be able to complete their mission if he tired them out just getting to the destination.

“Alright, I got it. You know where we’re going, and we’re almost there anyways. Kalayavan take point and set the pace, I’ll match you.”

Kalayavan felt pride swelling in his chest at the fact that he was going to lead even though he was a lower rank than Kalabhiti was; after some quick signals to the team behind them the two leaders swapped places, much to the relief of everyone behind them, and true to his word, Kalabhiti immediately adjusted to the new pace without a word.

The slower pace and the fact that he didn’t have to lead anymore gave Kalabhiti some valuable time to think before they arrived at the Yellow One. This beast was the one they knew the least about, and it was also the only one that they hadn’t infiltrated yet, meaning they didn’t have the blood of its owner either. Collecting the blood was a side mission, they only used the blood for their Transformations, but since they couldn’t really leave the planet anymore it wasn’t as important. Purple armor flashed inside his head forcing a snarl out of him, the planet Thrakzian and its people used to be well known, but a few centuries ago an unknown military race came and nearly destroyed everything, after stripping the planet of its natural resources and experimenting on their ancestors. Only a few managed to escaped and went underground into hiding, the invading race feared the power of the warriors of the Thrakzian and killed the majority of them the second they came, forcing the rest to fight for sport and experiment on them.

Kalabhiti was far too young to remember when this unknown race came, only the mysterious Elders were alive during that time, but he had seen footage and heard the stories thousands of times, this race had mercilessly destroyed everything, too cowardly to say why or who they were, anyone who got those answers never lived to tell the tale. They’re once peaceful and prosperous planet had been stripped to the bone of all of its resources, after every last drop had been collected, they destroyed every remaining ship and piece of technology that was left, before they themselves left, leaving the survivors stranded on a broken planet. Even now their planet was still too damaged to properly support life, everything they ate and drank is artificially produced by salvaged and stolen technology.

That’s why the remaining warriors ran these missions, they stole supplies and technology to support the planets survivors and the planet itself; they collected blood, so they could disguise themselves as anyone to further help their cause. It was the life that they had been forced to live for decades now, but the Thrakzian people were stubborn and determined, they would continue to live this life until they either repaired their planet or found a way to a new one where they could live in peace once again.

* * *

Shiro returned to thought after hearing the relieving news of Blue; a detail he had forgotten was forced back into his head- they all had leg cuts, except for Hunk.

His mind screamed at him that there just had to be an explanation for this, the yellow lion was in the best condition, that was true, but none of the other Lions had sustained enough damage to justify a leg injury and there was also nothing inside the cockpits that could cut them. His hand went to his chest where three long cuts ran, his first thought when he saw them was that they looked like claw marks from some kind of animal, he had immediately discarded that idea because it was impossible that an animal could have gotten into the Black Lion.

Shiro’s mind wandered back to the report that he had gotten from a frantic Lance and Keith about how someone had looked just like him and had managed to get into Blue before turning into an alien creature that could be compared to an animal.

 _Why didn’t they kill me? Why go through all of this trouble and have the perfect opportunity just to keep me alive?_ Shiro was too lost in thought to laugh at Pidge and Hunk’s antics as they excitedly chatted and playfully teased each other while they prepared the scanning software to install in Blue.

_What are we not seeing?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again, I must apologize for the wait, but I promise I’m trying to do better! Thank you all so much for the continued support! Chapter 9 is on its way. See you next time!  
> ~Kiera540


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and Happy Holidays! Enjoy the chapter! 
> 
> Disclaimer- I do not own, or claim to own, any of these characters, they all belong to their respected owners, I simply create fanfiction with them. Any similarities to real people or real events is purely coincidental.

“You summoned me Lord High Elder?” Dearil questioned, careful to keep emotion out of his voice. In all honesty, getting summoned by the Elders was terrifying, getting summoned by the High Elder himself was even worse. The only time the Elders actually summoned one of the higher-ups was when something seriously bad was happening, there hadn’t been a summons in years and the last time the High Elder wasn’t seen at all.

The Elders were the oldest living creatures on Thrakzian, they are also the only surviving members of the old Thrakzian before the invasion nearly 400 years ago.  
Now they lived deep underground of the main HQ, their location was so secret that even some of their own people did not know where to find them. Despite their vast knowledge, the Elders rarely revealed what they knew, choosing to remain silent unless in times of extreme crisis.

“They have returned.” The High Elder’s voice shook with fear, as he looked at the current leader of the Warriors of Thrakzian with regret.

 _They?_ Dearil thought as his head shot up from his kneeling position to stare disbelievingly at the High Elder, _No, it can’t be. He can’t possibly mean them!_

“Yes, them.” His voice had stabilized slightly, but the regret was still present in his eyes, regret that he had to speak the dreaded words, regret that this generation which had not known the horror of the invasion was now going to witness it firsthand.

“Are you sure?! How could they be here?!” Dearil’s breathing was growing ragged as more questioned swirled inside his head. How could they miss this!

“Let me finish. I am positive that they have returned, I sense their kind, but only faintly. I’d imagine that it’s one or two scouts.” Dearil took several breaths to calm himself again after receiving the slightly better news.

“Five creatures have recently crashed onto the planets surface, I currently have teams deployed, so far only one of us has been spotted. Are all of them invaders?” The current leader was back to his calm, analytical self, it was a good thing too; if they were all going to survive this, he couldn’t break now.

“No, they could be working with others, but there is only two Galra at the most.”

_Galra? Right, that’s what the invading race was called. No one even says their name anymore out of fear, I’d imagine that some of the younger ones have even forgotten their name by now._

“Who was seen?” The High Elders voice cut through his thoughts.

“Omisha was, my lord, but they believe that they killed him.”

“Hmm, even with his believed death him being spotted changes things.”

“What would you have us do, Lord High Elder?”

“Kill them.”

“Yes, my lor-“

“Wait.” A new voice entered from a private side entrance that Dearil did not use himself, despite not recognizing the voice he knew it had to be one of the Elders simply from the bold interruption and the location.

“What do you mean by ‘wait’?” The first Elder questioned to the new Elder sounding almost annoyed.

“Exactly what I said. Wait. We have no information on these current unwelcomed residents, Dearil said he has teams deployed already, so wait for their reports before making such a drastic and important decision.” A woman appeared at the High Elders side before sinking down to sit next to him.

“You and you’re ways. Do you feel nothing for those deployed? They will be killed by the Galra, or worse.” Countered the male Elder.

“And what’s wrong with my ways? There are five unknowns, and you said yourself that only two of them could possibly be Galra. Now I don’t dispute that claim, after all your sensing abilities are much better than my own, Brother, but trust me when I say that something doesn’t feel right.”

“How so?”

“Ah, curious now, are we? You could always sense people and locations, Brother, but I could always sense emotions, and what I sense definitely isn’t Galra. Like I said, I don’t think you’re wrong, but this Galra isn’t like the ones of old. We should do some recon first, then decide what to do; if they prove themselves to be dangerous then, by all means, kill them without hesitation; however, if they aren’t, then forget about them.” The last bit was aimed at Dearil as an order in her eyes, but being unable to do so with her elder brother present, it was a mere suggestion in her voice.

“Fine, do what you want. I have other matters to attend to.” With that the High Elder rose, and with unexpected grace, flowed from the room through the door that the woman had entered through.

“What ‘other matters’ you sit on your ass all day, don’t you?” She muttered under her breath loud enough for her brother to hear.

One might think that their almost childish banter would be out of character for people referred to as “Elders” except in Thrakzian’s reality, they were younger than middle aged. The High Elder was the oldest being nearly 450 years old himself while his sister was only 350 years of age, but for Thrakzians, they were still considered to be young due to the average lifespan of their kind being 1,200 years. Some considered them to be cursed due to their longevity, but they never saw it that way, they were always thankful for their long life; cherishing their opportunity to continue to watch over their children, help their beloved world, pass on knowledge, tell stories, train to be better, anything really.

Of course, that was before the Galra invaded 400 years ago to experiment on their people and steal their planets resources, the Warriors of Thrakzian were overwhelmed by the sheer number of ships and soldiers alike, but they continued to fight for years, refusing to give up. They had managed to survive in hiding for even longer despite being forced to let up the fight on the surface, and once the Galra left they immediately began to scavenge and rebuild.

“Well you heard ‘em.” Once again, Dearil was torn out of his wondering mind by someone else’s voice, “Dearil, gather all of the information that you can and act accordingly. Return to us if required, if not; operate at your own discretion, under the orders of the Elders.”

“Yes, Lady Elder.” Dearil rose, turned on his heel, and swiftly made his way back to the upper levels.

Persefoni and Morana were waiting for him on the first of the upper levels, clearly impatient.

“Well?! What are they like?!” Morana fired off the second Dearil came into view, more interested in what the mysterious Elders were like than what they actually said.

“What happened? What did they want? Did they actually speak to you?” Persefoni, on the other hand, didn’t really care what they were like or what they looked like, he cared far more about why they chose to stay down there away from everyone and what they said.

“Call the Elites and the veteran Captains, I’ll explain it then.” Dearil pushed past them, ignoring them, he knew that there would be thousands of questions and he didn’t feel like repeating himself, so he might as well do it when everyone was gathered to minimize hearing the same questions each time he spoke to someone.

 

* * *

 

Hunk was snoring in the Yellow Lion’s cockpit seat when an alarm started blaring inside his lion, “What-what just happened? Are we under attack?!” He yelled falling from his seat.

“No wait! It was me! I was working on the scanner and...uh...long story short I _might_ have _accidentally_ set off an alarm.” Pidge rubbed the back of her head while looking back and forth between Hunk and Shiro who had both previously been sleeping. Despite having wide eyes, once Shiro realized that it was a false alarm, he sighed heavily before rolling over and going back to sleep.

“That was a terrible apology for giving me a FREAKING HEART ATTACK PIDGE!” Hunk yelled while holding his chest, that was almost more terrifying than getting attacked by food goo in the Castle of Lions. Almost. He was still mentally scarred from that.

“Yeah, sorry about that, but hey, now that your awake, you wanna help me out with this one part?” Pidge gave an adorable smile as she held out the scanning chip in her hand.

“No. Absolutely not.” He replied grumpily, but snatched the chip anyways glaring at it as if it was going to make the alarm blare again.

 

* * *

Speaking of alarms...

Four different alarms were blaring inside the Castle of Lions as Coran started to transfer power around inside the ship again.

“You’d think that they’d put a mute button somewhere on this thing.” Coran yelled over the alarms while attempting to cover both ears, at the same time with one arm, while his remaining hand worked on stopping the alarms.

“Other than right now, what use would a muted alarm hold?” Allura hollered covering both of her ears while the mice huddled against various parts of her to try to block the intruding sound.

“Got it!!” Coran shouted as he slammed his hand down onto what shall now be referred to as the “holy button.”

“Oh thank goodness, I’ve heard enough alarms recently.” Allura sighed as she cautiously lowered her hands, worried that the penetrating sound would start up again if she moved too quickly.

“We really should label stuff like this. Oh well, I’m sure I’ll remember to do it later. Sorry about that, Princess, but now that we’re close to the planet I’m transferring some of the power from the engines to the weapons and shield systems. It’ll make us slower, but we’ll at least be able to defend ourselves.”

“Excellent, but keep as much power as we can to the engines. We must reach the planet’s surface and get the Paladins soon, I’m starting to lose track of how long it’s been.”

“Don’t you worry Allura! The Castle has never failed any Altean!” Coran was back to his extravagant and cheerful self, so at least something good came of the alarms.

 

* * *

 

“Where’s travel music when you need it?” Lance muttered, slumped down in his chair as far as he could be while still being able to pilot the Blue Lion.

“Don’t even think about singing.” Keith growled from above him while he hunched over the back of the pilot’s chair.

“I wasn’t, but now that you’ve said that!” Lance took a very dramatic deep breath, but before any noise of any kind could come out, Keith had whipped his hand out to cover his mouth, so Lance instead started giggling like a madman behind his hand.

“Can you just focus on flying, or well I guess, driving Blue, please?”

“Fine, just ruin all of my fun why don’t you.”

“How far until we reach the Red Lion?”

“Oh look, you do care about something!” Lance got punched in the arm for that one, “Red should be coming into view in a second, we’re pretty close.”

“Good. Remember recon only.”

“Yeah, yeah, I got it mom.”

“Oh come on! That’s Shiro, and we all know it.”

“No, he’s more of a dad than a mom and we all know that.”

“Eh, true.”

 

True to Lance’s words, the Red Lion had started to come into view, putting an end to what was, obviously, a very important conversation. Keith sighed in relief when he saw his lion again, it had been a while since he had seen it, much less been in it, and if he hadn’t quite literally just told Lance that this was recon only, he would have been flying out of Blue to get back to Red.

“Well she looks okay, or at least as okay as possible given the circumstances.” Lance said, sounding relieved himself, but he did seem to be keeping a careful eye on Keith to make sure he didn’t go running off.

“It’s true that Red looks to be exactly the same as when I first left.”

“That makes it sound like there should be a ‘but’ at the end of that sentence. What’s up?”

“To be fair, I didn’t look at Red too hard before I left, I was more concerned with getting to the nearest person. The ‘but’ is, there are others here, we have proof of that, so why would they go through all of this trouble to get to us, but then leave the lions? Aren’t they more important than we are?”

Lance thought about that for a moment, it was true, when they encountered the...well whatever it was, it did seem to be more interested in them than in the lions. Why was that?

“That’s more of a Pidge question, you know.”

“She has enough on her plate right now. Come on, let’s get moving to Black next, we’ve still got a ways to go before we can meet up with everyone. You get us moving and I’ll inform Shiro.”

“Sounds like a plan.” The Blue Lion’s scanners were a little fuzzy, but they knew the general location of the famous Black Lion, once they got closer the scanners would clear up once again.

“Shiro, you hear me?” Keith said from a step behind Lance.

“Yeah I’m here. What’s up?” If Keith was honest, Shiro sounded exhausted, he slowly started to remember that Shiro was the most hurt out of all of them and that he was probably second closely followed by Lance, then Pidge with minor stuff, then lastly, Hunk who wasn’t hurt at all. _Great,_ thought Keith, _the two people who are supposed to be the leaders are the one’s hurt the most._

“We’re leaving Red now, everything looks as okay as it can get. How are you doing?”

“Hunk and Pidge are working on the scanner now, I think that they’ve almost got it completed.”

“Good, but Shiro how are you, yourself, doing? You’re hurt the most.”

“I woke up a little bit ago from a nap, I’m fine, Keith.”

Keith was ready to jump through the coms and strangle Shiro himself from that answer, but he knew that Shiro was trying to focus on the task at hand. They really needed to get off of this planet. The fact that Shiro was with both Pidge and Hunk was enough to force him to relax, getting worked up was the worst thing to do in a situation like this.

Shiro didn’t bother to ask how he was doing, he knew Keith better than anyone else, and he knew from his voice that he felt like crap, but he’s okay right now. Same as Shiro felt, and he knew that he would get the same, frustrating response. It was irritating to no end, but there really wasn’t anything more that they could do for each other until they could get back to the Castle of Lions. So both men left it at that, both knowing that the other was hurt, but excepting that there was nothing to do except silently remind each other to just keep moving forward.

 

* * *

“They’re stopping.” Yamajit informed from a couple of steps behind Methuselah as he sensed the change of pace in the Blue One through his Marking.

“Alright, let’s get closer and see what’s going on from there. Keep me informed.” Methuselah signaled to the rest of the squad members behind them, increasing their pace, he knew where they were and he was fairly certain that the Red One was in this area, but they needed to double check.

He was quickly proven correct as both the recently stopped Beast and the Red One came into view in front of them. Now the question was, what are they going to do? Were they going to exit the Beast that they were in and go into this new one, or were they planning something else? Once they figured that out, what should their move be? They were under orders to be recon only, but at the same time, Methuselah was curious as to why Omisha would break protocol and have contact with them.

Stopping his squad at what he thought was a safe distance away, he signaled to have Yamajit watch them while he started analyzing the information that they had. They knew pretty much nothing about these Beasts, they seemed to be robotic and sentient at the same time, and if you tried to work out how that was possible it would make your head spin. Second, those inside seemed to be very similar to them when they were in their humanoid form, but other than that, they knew nothing about them, their armor, or what kind of weapons they possessed.

The grey-haired Thrakzian groaned out loud and put his head into his hands, his whole life was stealth based, that was his area of expertise; he was used to having all of the information about his targets before he encountered them, now they had nothing, and he was expected to somehow figure it all out in the field.

“Sir, they’re moving again.”

“Already?” Methuselah snapped his head up and, sure enough, the Blue One was once again on the move, “I thought they would have stayed longer. Well time to get your steps in, let’s go.”

As everyone shot up and started to follow the Blue One again, a very unusual thing happened- a red blinking light and beeping sound suddenly started coming from Methuselah’s leather-bound left wrist. Murmurs started to break out throughout their group, only the Elites had that particular communication technology, and it was only used in emergencies.

“Ah hell! Yamajit, you still getting a clear reading?” The Elite looked back over his shoulder to the slightly nervous Team Captain.

“Yes sir I am.”

“Good, from now on, you’re leading. Keep everyone further back out of sight and use your Marking to track them. I’ll be right back.” At that, Methuselah broke off from the group, he remained in sight, but he was out of earshot of everyone, trying to avoid a panic. They had sent off a messenger with a report not that long ago and she should have arrived by now, so why would they use the wrist commlink instead of just sending her back? Something big had to have happened. His mind drifted to Kalabhiti for a moment, had something happened to him?

“Methuselah here. Good to go.” He waited impatiently as the rest of the Elites started checking in, after everyone had checked in and indicated that they were able to listen, then they would be told what this was about.

 

* * *

 

“I don’t see a way in.” Kalayavan informed Kalabhiti as he returned from circling around the Yellow One.

“I don’t see a good way either. Why’d we get the boring one? We can’t do recon unless we either get inside there or unless they move, and we can’t get in there to do that or to collect the blood of the Yellow One for our Transformations.” Kalabhiti was beyond irritated, what the hell did Command expect them to do! There’s no way that it can be honestly said that they didn’t know this was going to happen, and yet here they are, sitting on their asses with nothing to do except twiddle their thumps and count the sand around them.

“What are your orders, sir?” Kalayavan was at his wits end as well, but everyone knew that there was only one thing to do.

“What do you think? We sit on our asses until the situation changes or until we get new orders.” _Or until we go crazy._ His mind helpfully added, but he wisely decided not to voice that thought.

For the Thrakzian Warriors, orders were absolute, anything that could be thought of doing would always be better than disobeying orders, regardless of what it was. It might sound cruel, but that was what had kept them alive all this time, after all, it was Command’s job to know everything even if those in the field didn’t; that’s why you always just shut up and follow orders and everyone would live to see tomorrow.

A sudden, invasive beeping nearly scared his soul out of his body because Kalabhiti had his head propped on his left arm and his wrist happened to be right next to his ear. Once the ringing in his head had started to settle down, the flashing red light immediately put him on alert; something’s seriously wrong.

“Dammit you’ve got to be kidding me! Kalayavan, hold position and take over. I’ll be back.” He shot up and raced off to an area devoid of his men, the majority of the Elites who weren’t on a mission had already checked in at this point. He started to think of the other squads who were deployed, Don’t tell me that stealth idiot got in over his head and caused this, his fears over said ‘stealth idiot’ were put down though when he heard him check in, but his mind was still racing in its attempt to figure out why they had called out the ‘big guns’ instead of using a messenger, that’s why they had them after all.

“Kalabhiti. What happened?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is my longest chapter to date! I know it has some short sections, but I hope that the fact that we got everyone in and the length make up for that. I have to say it again; I am absolutely floored by the response that ‘Stranded’ has gotten and I want to sincerely thank everyone who has liked, commented, and read it! It really, truly does mean the world to me. So, once again, thank you!!!
> 
> Also, quick note, I am working on another Voltron story as well, the information that I can currently share is-  
> A friend of mine did help me with the groundwork and finalizing the story line, so it is a collab, but it is written by me.  
> It’s set in a modern-day time era.  
> Lance and Adam are vigilantes while Keith and Shiro are cops.  
> I haven’t named it yet, so if you have an idea- I’m all ears.  
> I don’t have a release date quite yet, but I will keep y’all posted.
> 
> Sorry about the long notes, but thank you for taking the time to read them! Chapter 10 is in progress. See you next time!  
> ~Kiera540


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m back! Enjoy!
> 
> Disclaimer- Y'all know this by now, right?

“What happened to this place?” Allura gasped out as the Castle of Lions entered Thrakzian’s atmosphere. The entire planet was almost completely a desert with only a few small patches of green spread out, Allura could tell that this wasn’t the natural environment for the planet though, ruins of large cities, destroyed buildings, and the ground seemed to have been burned.

“What could have done this?” She couldn’t believe her eyes, she had seen her fair share of destruction while piloting the Castle and working with the Paladins, but the entire planet had been destroyed. There was only one question that remained in her mind- was this due to a devastating natural disaster or was there a more sinister force behind this?

“We need to focus on finding the Paladins, Princess.” Coran’s voice pulled her from her thoughts, “Now that we’re below the Thrakzian’s upper atmosphere we can use the short-range scanners to find them, although due to the damage of the ship, it might take some time.”

“Right, how did the power transfer go?” One thing at a time, the Paladins came first, then they had to fix the Castle of Lions, after they accomplished those two tasks, then she could look into this planet’s history.

“We lost half of our speed, but the weapons system is back online, and the shields are almost fully charged while the healing pods have full power and are ready to be used if needed.” Coran and Allura both heaved a sigh of relief at his words, in all honesty, their situation was slowly becoming less desperate.

“Good. Active the scanners to search the whole planet for the Lions, once we find one, we’ll go pick them up and throw their Paladin in a Pod.” The space mice saluted her and huddled in front of the appropriate screen to help in the search for the missing Paladins.

* * *

“Are we there yet?” Lance jokingly drawled out when he woke up from his nap, after the two of them had checked on both Red and Black, they had decided to switch places. The green lion was a lot further from their position then the other Lion’s had been, so Keith half-suggested, half-threatened Lance to rest while he took over and piloted Blue.

“Not yet. Go back to sleep, you need it.” Keith glanced down at him, he wasn’t bleeding and he maintained steady color in his face, but Keith was still worried about him. He knew that none of the Paladins had taken the time to properly attempt to fix themselves up, they had all instead decided to stubbornly ignore their injuries and focus on the task at hand. It wasn’t one of their smartest decisions, and it definitely wasn’t a healthy one, but it did help them to keep moving toward their goal.

“I’m alright. How are you doing?”

“Just fine.”

“That’s a lie if I ever heard one.” Lance scoffed, “You drive, but let me see that leg.”

“It’s fine Lance.” Keith swatted his hand away, but Lance wasn’t having that.

“Keith, you probably don’t even remember now, but when we fought that creature he threw you outside; not to mention, even before that, you ran all the way from Red to me. If we don’t take care of that, it will get infected! And don’t even get me started on you nearly blowing up!” Lance gave him the most intense glare that he could muster before grabbing the med kit and dropping to his knees next to Keith’s leg.

Lance carefully removed the armor plating on Keith’s leg that had at least partially been protecting the wound from the elements, the bandages from the last time they did this were still intact and he didn’t seem to be bleeding at the moment. Lance removed the old wrappings, cleaned the wound again, rewrapped him, and put the plating back into place without a problem. He did, however, encounter a problem when he tried to take Keith’s left hand.

“Come on, let me see it.” Lance tried again.

“No, it’s fine. Besides if you do anything to my hand right now I can’t fly.”

“Okay first of all, we’re not flying, and second you only need one hand for this, look around it’s a desert. Now give it.” Keith couldn’t come up with a good response to that, so Lance used that opportunity to snatch his hand away, but Lance knew the real reason why Keith didn’t want to give him his hand; his hand was actually hurting him. Before Keith could mount a proper argument, Lance had already stolen his hand, removed the armor, and started inspecting him.

The burns on Keith’s forearm were healing nicely since the last time they did this, the arm was now an angry shade of red instead of actual burns; his hand however, was much worse than simply red; while still angry, the skin of his hand was also covered in bloody burns and swollen spots. Keith hissed when Lance started reapplying the burn cream on his arm and hand, Lance made sure that his hand had a thick covering before wrapping the burned areas and securing the bandages on his bicep.

“Feel better?” Lance questioned, still gingerly holding Keith’s arm while it relaxed.

“Stings like hell, but I suppose that’s a good thing.” He slowly started moving his arm, it felt strange to him, but the cream was beginning to give a cooling tingle that was soothing his arm helping him to use it normally without pain.

“Now how close are we to Green?”

“Lance that took you what, ten minutes? We still have a ways to go. The trip from Green to Yellow will be much shorter though.”

Lance dramatically flopped to the floor of Blue, he swore right then and there that he would never take flying for granted again.

* * *

“If you could just hurry up and die or regain consciousness that’d be great, you know.” Bhishak mutter to the unconscious Omisha, it had felt like days since he had been assigned to watch him. Now he was forced to sit here and watch this half-dead being instead of being in what appeared to be an incredibly important meeting with his mentor.

“Don’t let Leader hear you say that.”

“Don’t you have somewhere else to be Jeevak? Don’t tell me you ran out of heavy things to lift or throw around?” Bhishak sighed as the large, muscular man named Jeevak lowered his impressive bulk into the chair on the other side of Omisha.

“There’s actually plenty for me to do, but I got recalled at the same time that this meeting was called in. Got nothing to do, same as you, so I figured I’d see who was called and who got left out, plus I was hoping for the chance to annoy you too. I’m assuming that Kritanta is in there?”

“She bounced her happy ass in there alright. If you got recalled, then Thanatos got called in right? Why would they need you two knuckleheads? You two are strong as hell I’ll give you that, but you guys aren’t exactly the sharpest tools in the shed, are you?”

“He’s in there, as what appears to be all of the Elites and Captains, not counting you of course. You sure you’re actually a Captain?”

Bhishak hummed in response, as usual, they ignored the digs thrown around at each other. These two couldn’t be more different, Bhishak was tall and thin with his laid-back attitude represented in his light blue hair, he was a Healer who focus was on the health of his comrades and on defense, any attacks he had were long-distance. On the other hand, Jeevak was extremely broad and a little shorter while his more fiery attitude was shown in his bright orange hair, he was known as a ‘heavy hitter’ his job was all about short-ranged damage and destruction while also using his monstrous strength to help out with the manual labor around their headquarters and other outposts. Despite their differences they had come up with their own little routine whenever they saw each other, Bhishak could use his sharp wit to make sassy comments without getting scolded and Jeevak could tease to his heart’s content without either one getting offended.

“What exactly happened to Omisha anyways?” Jeevak questioned after a moment of silence.

“From what I can piece together, he went with Dearil to the Black One to get the blood before being sent to the Blue One on his own to collect that blood. He was overdue on reporting in, but before we sent the Scouts after him, he showed up beaten and bloody with his tail between his legs. He rambled on about how after he got the blood another one showed up and he ended up getting seen and electrocuted even, before passing out on us.”

“How was he seen and electrocuted if he already had the blood?”

“That’s what doesn’t make sense to me. We run off of ‘Get in. Get out.’ guys like you are hardly used anymore because of that motto. I don’t get it.”

Jeevak thought about that for a moment; it was true, he wasn’t very smart, but he certainly wasn’t an idiot. He knew his blue-haired counterpart enough to know that this was bugging the crap out of him, so he helped out the only way he could, by asking questions and forcing Bhishak to work through it out loud.

“What happened after that? I was out in the field so I’m way out of the loop.”

“I’ve heard that the Blue One is on the move now, Menahem came back a little while ago and I heard the report. Next, Leader was called in by the Elders, I still can’t believe that, then he had Morana and Persefoni call in the Elites and most of the Captains, even busted out the old long-range communicators to contact those in the field.”

“Wasn’t the Blue One broken though, or at least offline? Why would it start up after Omisha came back?”

“Something about a bomb going off, oh yeah, Leader did ask me about a bomb when Omisha came back.”

“Could it have been one of our bombs? How would that help them?”

“I’m pretty sure it was one of our electromagnetic bombs that are supposed to deactivate aircraft, this time though, it looks like they turned the ‘explosion’ into power to get them running again.”

“What’s with the finger quotes around explosion?”

“The way we make those bombs doesn’t require gunpowder or anything like that so they don’t really explode they just kinda spark and shock.”

Jeevak made an ‘oh’ face before falling silent again, he wanted to help Bhishak, but he was having trouble finding the right questions to ask.

“I know what you’re doing.” Bhishak’s voice pulled him back out of his head.

“What do you mean?” He asked innocently.

“You think that if you sit here and bombard me with questions I’ll magically come up with the answer.”

“To be fair, it’s worked in the past, it was worth a try.”

“Don’t bother. I’ve been over it thousands of times, I’ve looked at every angle, thought of every motive, ran through every scenario there is and the only thing I got out of it was the mother of all headaches.”

“At least that explains your pleasant mood. There a reason you’re not in there?” Jeevak gestured in the vague direction of the meeting room.

“This guy is part of it, I’m supposed to keep him alive, and I’m apparently not a high enough rank for this meeting. They call me a Captain and I was officially given the title, but they really only use me as a full-fledge Captain when Kritanta isn’t available.”

“Look at that, a Captain that isn’t ‘captain’ enough!”

“Very funny. Watch him for a minute? I’ve got to move around.”

“Yeah go ahead.”

His first few steps were a little shaky while he tried to get feeling back into his legs, he quickly found out that Jeevak wasn’t joking, this place had become a ghost town. Just about everyone was either out in the field or stuck in the meeting, he guessed that the other outposts were the same. He made his way to the food hall to grab a drink while he had a chance hoping that it would help his headache. His head felt like it was trying to split open and even though he was a Healer he couldn’t do anything about it, healing other people was hard, healing yourself was almost impossible. He just had to hope that his mentor would be done soon.

“BHISHAK!” His drink dropped to the ground and as a medic, he was positive that he had almost had a heart attack when his name was bellowed through the base.

“Really?!” It took him a moment, but he recognized the voice as the one belonging to Jeevak, choosing to ignore it for the time being before quickly remembering what the said man was doing.

“Oh crap.” He abandoned his drink all together and sprinted down the halls that suddenly seemed much longer than when he had walked down them a few minutes earlier.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope everyone enjoyed that! I apologize for the wait and the slightly shorter chapter. February until the middle of May are my busiest months, but rest assured that I’m still putting the chapters out as fast as I can.
> 
> Also the vigilante story that I mentioned in the last chapter has officially been posted under the name “Night has Come” and has two chapters so far, so please check that out if you are interested.
> 
> Thank you so much for the amazing support!! Chapter 11 coming up! See you next time!  
> ~Keira540


	11. Explanation Chapter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It has come to my attention that some people are a little confused about the Thrakzian creatures, so I thought that I would have our newest character give a little presentation to hopefully clear some things up.

“Hey, everyone it’s Jeevak, and as Kiera said I’m going to explain what exactly we are.” Jeevak appeared suddenly with little note cards, “Okay, so first off, we live on the planet Thrakzian, this planet is not from anything relating to the Voltron franchise and was created from the authors imagination. The people living on this planet are called ‘Thrakzians,’ there are two types of Thrakzians; the Civilian and Warrior. The Warrior Thrakzian branch is basically our version of the military, and their job is to protect the Civilian branch.”

Jeevak threw the now-used notecards in front of him, before grabbing some new ones from the stool next to him while he launched into the next topic.

“Second, Thrakzian was once a very prosperous and beautiful planet before the Galra Empire invaded us 400 years ago and wreaked havoc on our people and planet. Thrakzian had a powerful infantry military and air force, but we never invaded other planets, we only used our military as a defense. Our planet was very prosperous in natural resources, so we also used our air force to defend shipments, that we traded, from pirates or other hijackers. The Galra invaded us to take advantage of our resources and they wanted to figure out the secret to our powers and steal them for their army.”

“Now an explanation of our different powers; everyone who is a part of the Warrior Thrakzians can use what’s referred to as ‘Beast Form.’ When not in this form we actually look similar to your human race, we even come in all sorts of extravagant hair colors and various skin tones and refer to ourselves as ‘people.’ When in Beast Form, we walk on all fours with strong legs attached to a long torso, while our faces contort to have long, sharp fangs and bright eyes of either red, gold, or blue. The eye colors represent our ranks- red for the leader of the entire Warrior branch, gold for Elites or Captains, and blue for those remaining. I have blue see?”

Jeevak’s previously brown eyes suddenly turned blue when he pointed to them, when they were in their human form, they could choose whether their colored eyes showed or not, in Beast Form, however; they had no control over it.

“Other powers are- ‘Marking’ like we’ve seen Yamajit do in other chapters, that technique is used as tracking, it’s a difficult technique that not everyone can do. Next, is the ‘Ash Illusion’ that we heard Omisha used to deceive the Paladins, this technique gives the appearance that we ‘died’ and turned to ash, it’s difficult to master, but fairly easy to learn. We also have infiltration and speed techniques that Methuselah and Kalabhiti, respectively, have mastered, but we haven’t seen any of those in this story yet. Our most famous technique, which I believe is what the Galra were after the most, was our ‘Shifting.’ Shifting is exactly what it sounds like, we can ‘shift’ to look like absolutely anyone, there are no limitations; the only problematic bit is- we have to have the blood of that person in order to shift into them. Once we have their blood, we put it on a special marking on our left wrist and then we shift. There are only two ways to exit the shift; the Thrakzian willingly stops and exits the shift, or the mark on our wrist is cut, burned, or similarly disrupted. That’s why we are after the blood of the Paladins.”

Jeevak threw a rather impressive pile of note cards onto the ground in front of him before taking a deep breath to prepare himself for the next part.

“When the Galra invaded us, we fought against them but were overpowered by the sheer number of their forces. The civilians they used for manual labor, while they took the Warriors and forced them to fight in their arenas and experimented on us. Only a few of the captured Warriors managed to escape from the Galra and go into hiding deep within the planet where they waited and did what they could to help the people. The escapees were unable to do anything except stand on the sidelines while their planet was destroyed, and the people slaughtered by this invading race. The leaders of that surviving group became the Elders that we have today, and that were seen in previous chapters, and before you think ‘that’s impossible they’d be too old to still be alive’ remember that the average Thrakzian lifespan is 1,200 years and the Galra invasion was only 400 years ago.”

“Okay I believe that this is the last of it; the objectives of the missions that we run are to gather blood for our Shifting and to gather technology and other resources necessary for us to sustain the current life on our planet. The planet became unhospitable after the Galra was finished with it, but our people persevered, civilians and Warriors alike banded together to salvage anything they could from the destruction on our planet and we found a way to artificially create the food and water that we needed. Nowadays, it’s the civilian’s job to attempt to heal our planet from the materials that we gather, while the Warriors gather technology and parts, while also defending the planet.”

Jeevak threw the remaining notecards down before plopping next to them, and staring at the author typing furiously away at her computer.

“I’m done, can I go back now?”

“Say goodbye then you can, but don’t bother Bhishak.” The author informed him.

“Why not?!”

“He’s busy, that’s why.”

“Doing what?”

“...I’m writing that, wait until the next chapter!”

“If I can’t bother him then what the hell am I supposed to do?”

“Whatever you usually do when he’s not available.”

“You haven’t had me do anything except this presentation and bother him, remember?”

“Oh. Right. Then clean up the notecards and I’ll let you help me write Chapter 12.”

“Nope, you get to clean them up. Imma go take a nap.”

“Why do I have to clean them up? They are yours.”

“Yes, well I had to do this because SOMEONE forgot to explain things clearly.”

“Hey, to be fair-”

“Me. Nap. NOW. Bye everyone!”

“You know, I could kill you off or give you some horrible fate.”

“We all know you won’t, nice try though. I’m too annoyingly lovable for that. Now let me take my nap woman!”

“My own character has betrayed me.” The author mumbled before returning to her work.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well I hope that cleared everything up; don’t be afraid to ask any remaining questions that you might have. I also hope everyone enjoyed the little spat between me and Jeevak. Chapter 11 is on its way. See you next time!  
> ~Kiera540


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello again! I once again must apologize for the long wait, with graduation, regionals for my sport, and life in general I’m struggling to find time to write. Thank you so much for the phenomenal support!! I’m also really happy that the explanation chapter cleared up the confusion! Don’t be afraid to comment, or PM me if you have any questions, and I can always write another explanation chapter if necessary. Enjoy Chapter 12!

The oh-so-top-secret-meeting, that literally everyone knew about at this point, was in full swing; as expected, people were yelling.

“We should just shoot them down!” Thanatos hollered out when the question was raised about what they should do now that the Castle of Lions was entering their atmosphere.

“We don’t have the firepower to shoot them down.” Persefoni argued.

“We have that Ion Cannon we salvaged a few years back. We should use it now; destroy the incoming ship, then reinforce our teams in the field and take out the other five. The technology that their vessels possess could save our people!”

“We can’t use the Cannon.” Dearil spoke up for the first time in a while. He fell silent after explaining the situation to them, and allowing them to voice the ideas in their heads.

“It’s the only weapon we have that could take that ship down! Why do you hesitate?”

“We have three shots, at best, with the Ion Cannon. Our new opponent is here to rescue the one’s stuck here, they will have their guard up. They are expecting an attack. There’s no guarantee that the Ion Cannon would be able to bring them down.”

“Not to mention, since this vessel is here, we now have six enemy ships on our planet and half that amount of shots. Say that we do take out that vessel with a single shot from the Ion Cannon, the other five would immediately prepare for the same attack. From examining those five smaller ships, we know that they have excellent movability which would make them almost impossible to hit with the Cannon.” Persefoni added to Dearil’s comment.

“If we set off the bombs in the leg joints of the ships down here, it would decrease their mobility; however, since the mis-trigger in the Blue One I’d expect that they’d be working on a way to remove or deactivate those bombs. Again, no guarantee that the bombs would activate, and even if they did, we don’t know if it would slow them down enough to hit them with the Ion Cannon.” Morana pipped up then.

“Even if the bombs still worked, that’s five opponents with only two shots remaining.” Persefoni added before nodding to Morana. It had taken a while, but she was finally starting to think like the second-in-command officer that she was. Persefoni knew after receiving a terrible injury almost two years ago that he was unable to continuing serving as the second-in-command, but he wasn’t exactly thrilled when Morana was chosen to take his place. Still he trained her; doing his best to prepare her, although her fiery attitude quickly proved to be difficult to tame which caused some tension out in the field, but recently she started to embrace her role and mellowed out a bit.

“Why are you even here Persefoni? A war council is no place for a washed-up soldier.” Persefoni scoffed at the comment, Thanatos knew he had lost the argument, but he refused to go down. Persefoni really didn’t care about the snide remark, he’d gotten them before; he knew his worth, and wasn’t about to let something like a bitter comment get to him. However, other members present in the meeting didn’t take too kindly to that comment.

“Persefoni has served for many years, his experience and expertise makes him an invaluable resource to us. He may be injured, but he still continues to serve in any way he can. He is my trusted advisor whose presence is essential here. I must say I’m a little confused as to why you’re here.” Dearil activated his eyes as he spoke, for the most part, he was pretty laid back despite being the leader, but anger him, and those red eyes would remined you exactly who he was.

“Forgive me, Leader. I spoke without thinking.” Thanatos bowed his head while bringing his right hand up and across his chest, showing submission.

Kritanta sighed as the meeting continued normally after that, what she didn’t understand was why SHE was forced to be here. Thanatos was only a Captain, but he led the Heavy Hitters squad and might be needed before the day was over, making his presence necessary. Kritanta was an Elite, making her a higher rank, but she was a medic. To be fair, she was a damn good medic; even if her patient was seconds from death she had the power to heal them; although when it came to military tactics, she wasn’t very useful, especially when compared to the other members.

Her job was to stay behind the front lines for protection, and heal the wounded that were brought to her. Now she was stuck in a war council, utterly exhausted, with nothing to say. Her healing power was great, but it required laser-like focus and precise control of her abilities which was both mentally and physically taxing, leaving her with some serious fatigue after using her power. Healing Omisha had been no exception, which now left her on the verge of falling asleep in the middle of this meeting.

“Our own lack of information is the problem. We still have no idea as to what exactly the ships on our planet are, and now we have even more questions with the arrival of this large ship. Leader, surely the Elders gave you some information on our opponents, did they not?” The Elite Nirasha who led the Distance Fighters spoke now.

“They spoke to me of the Galra threat and nothing more.” Dearil answered her.

“Then was their intention to frighten us? These ships and our brief views of the life forms piloting them don’t match up with our records of the Galra in any way. The only reason we have to suspect that they are Galra are based off of what the Elders have sensed, which I don’t support as actual evidence.”

“We must respect what the Elders have said. They possess powers that even the brightest of us cannot explain, and they are the only left among us who have encountered the Galra. We must believe them when they say there is one, or perhaps two, Galra on our planet, and that is a threat we can’t ignore.”

“Respect them, yes. Believe them? I struggle to do that, I work in pure, hard facts, that is what I must do. That is what we have done to survive all these years.”

Normally, Dearil admired Nirasha’s sharp intellect and tough views, right now though, they only annoyed him. Nirasha worked in absolutes, that’s what made her such a good leader for the Distance Fighters, with her working in absolute facts she always knew the best and most effective way to take advantage of the few distance powers they had. It was because of her that the Distance Fighters practically never missed.

Kritanta glanced between the two leaders currently in the middle of a stare-off which quickly turned into another debate. Typically, the next leader after Dearil would be the second-in-command Morana, but she was lacking the support one would usually have, so the support for the next leader was given to Nirasha instead. Kritanta didn’t support either one of them really, Morana was too hot-headed and didn’t see the bigger picture, while Nirasha was much too stubborn and unyielding in her own personal views to make a good leader. Persefoni really was everyone’s first choice, but unless he recovered, he wouldn’t be able to lead. Kritanta grit her teeth then, it was her job as the head medic to heal him, but regardless of what she did, she couldn’t find a way to help him.

“You alright?” Persefoni’s voice startled her out of her own head. She was so absorbed in her own mind that she hadn’t noticed him make his way over to stand next to her.

“I’m fine, just tired. How are you feeling?” She matched his low tone with her own voice. Dearil and Nirasha, plus a few others were still arguing without noticing their conversation.

“I’m good. Is healing Omisha really taking this much out of you? It’s been a long time since I’ve seen you this out of it.”

“Electricity has never agreed with our people, now add to that an improper execution of the Ash Technique and that leaves Omisha’s insides a jumbled mess. I really don’t know how he managed to make it back here on his own.”

“Hmm. I’m not really concerned with him getting here by his own power, but how he managed to get all the way here without the Scouts seeing him approach.”

“You think that there might be a hole in our formation somewhere?”

“It’s possible. One of us slipping through isn’t a big deal, but if one of our uninvited guests gets through, that would pose a ridiculously big problem.”

“After the meeting we’ll have to review it. I believe they’re operating under the Wing Formation, but if that leaves a hole the Diamond Formation could prove to be a better patrol route for the Scouts.” Kritanta rubbed a bruise on her while she spoke slowly sinking back into her own mind while her head buzzed with different formations.

“You should have Bhishak heal that if you’re just going to keep messing with it.” Persefoni’s voice and hand on her arm once again brought her back from the depths of her mind.

“He’s watching over Omisha and needs his strength, besides this will be gone in a few days.” Persefoni nodded before returning to his original spot. That was the annoying thing about Kritanta’s power, she could heal anyone that she came into contact with- anyone but herself. It didn’t matter if it was a small bruise, paper cut, or a serious laceration; she couldn’t heal herself. It hardly seemed fair in her mind.

“For the love of the Elders, can it! The Blue One is headed straight for the Yellow One and we’re almost there. Those of us in the field need a plan now!” Methuselah shouted out in between pants, stilling the entire room. Methuselah had just successfully reminded everyone that there were Elites deployed in the field and that they were able to hear everything that was said due to being called earlier.

“Wait, Meth which direction are you coming from?! We don’t have a visual on the Blue One!” Kalabhiti shouted now.

“We’re coming up right behind you Greenie. Move your asses now or you’re going to be seen or run over!”

Various yelling from their com system started to fill the room while the receivers were slid onto a table in the middle of the room. There were currently four Elites deployed; Methuselah, who had been assigned to recon for the Blue One, Kalabhiti, who had been assigned to the Yellow One, and the remaining two were Scouts who were currently stationed in two different outposts.

“Kalabhiti, what’s your current status?” Dearil questioned.

“We’re currently hauling ass out of the way; give us another minute and a half and we’ll be clear. Other than that, we’ve been watching the Yellow One as ordered. Nothing to report, they haven’t moved, and we’ve been unable to infiltrate.”

“Methuselah?”

“I sent Menahem back earlier to inform you of the Blue One’s ability to move, since then it has proceeded to check on the Red, Black, and Green One and is now nearing the Yellow One. I’d say we have about four minutes until they reach each other.”

“Scouts, what’s happening?”

“Everything seems normal, nothing to report.” The first scout responded.

“Nothing going on here; all clear.” The second confirmed.

“So that gives us four minutes to come up with a plan.” Persefoni started, “I’ve got an idea-” He was cut off when the heavy meeting room doors were thrown open.

“Bhishak?!” Kritanta who was instantly more awake now, yelled out, not believing what she had just seen. Her laid-back apprentice had just barged into an important high-ranking meeting uninvited.

“What’s the meaning of this?!” Dearil roared out while Bhishak was seized by the two people who were nearest the doors; they happened to be Thanatos and Nirasha.

“Oh not now.” Persefoni groaned.

“Mentor!” Bhishak called with a bit of fear in his voice.

“Leader, let him speak, please!” Kritanta rose to stand in front of Bhishak blocking Dearil’s view of him.

“Fine. Out with it boy!”

“It’s Omisha! He’s either dying or fighting to regain consciousness, I can’t help him on my own!”

Dearil growled, this day was just getting worse and worse. “Alright, Kritanta go. Nirasha, Thanatos prepare your teams. You two plus me and Morana are going to deal with that ship once it lands. Methuselah, Kalabhiti rendezvous outside of the Beasts, exchange information, do some recon, and await further orders. Scouts continue your patrols and report in if anything changes. Persefoni you’re in charge, stay here and run Command.”

A series of ‘Yes Sir!’ rang out before people were sprinting around the compound to carry out the orders.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope everyone enjoyed that! Chapter 13 is actually completed and will be posted in about 10 minutes! See you next time!  
> ~Kiera540


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two chapters in one day?!?!?! I know, crazy right? Well enjoy!

“Coran, new plan.” Allura said breaking the silence.

“Yes, Princess?”

“Instead of using the short-range scanners let’s transfer the power to the short-range coms instead. That way we can coordinate our movements with those of the Paladins.”

“That’s a wonderful idea! I’ll get started on it right away!”

“Great, I’m going to go ensure that the healing pods are functioning properly.”

Allura swiftly made her way down to where the healing pods were, taking her time to carefully inspect each one. They had five Paladins with six pods, and Allura couldn’t be more grateful, now they wouldn’t have to worry about picking who got to use the pod first and could just simultaneously throw each of them into their very own pod.

The mice followed her around, diligently climbing into the pods and sniffing around the floor to try to help her check. Their presence helped calmed Allura, she didn’t know what she would do without them constantly being on or near her.

Father, she pleaded in her mind as she made her way back to the bridge, please let them be okay! The universe still needs Voltron.

* * *

“There it is!” Lance excitedly yelled once the Black Lion finally came into their view.

“Bout time you guys got here!” Pidge teased through the coms.

“Pull up close then get in Yellow. From there we can come up with a plan.” Shiro said. He could have sworn he saw movement while he watched as the Blue Lion approached, he continued to scan the area but saw nothing. He rubbed his eyes, they needed to get off this planet.

“Open your door, we’ll shoot inside with our packs; then immediately close it behind us.” Keith ordered.

“Waiting on you.” Pidge again said in a teasing voice.

The door on Blue opened a minuscule amount before slamming shut as Keith and Lance, true to the ladder’s words, came flying into the Yellow Lion with the door slamming closed behind them.

“LANCE!!” Hunk cried right before he tackled said man onto the floor of Yellow, Pidge sprinted to jump on top of them to form a dogpile while Shiro marched right up to Keith to pull him into a tight hug. Finally all five of the Paladins of Voltron were together again.

Shiro’s heart was rapidly beating, almost to the point of beating straight out of his chest. He had sworn to look after the other four Paladins when it became obvious that they wouldn’t be able to return to Earth anytime soon. They might have given him the nickname of “Space Dad” but he really was like an older brother to all of them, he had sworn to himself and to families that he had never met, that he would take care of these guys however they needed until he could bring them back to Earth. He hadn’t allowed himself to fear for them while they were separated, but now that they were all together again, all of the emotions that he had suppressed and ignored came flooding back to him. Shiro released Keith ad took a few deep breaths, they were almost done, all they had to do was find Allura and get the Lions onboard. Easy, right?

“Okay guys that’s enough. We’ve got to focus. Pidge, Hunk, get working on the scanner to detect any more of those bombs; Keith, Lance, get some rest while you can. I’m going to see if I can find the Castle.” Shiro instructed, getting everyone back on track. Hunk and Pidge zipped over to the Blue Lion to get the information that they needed, while Lance promptly flopped down in the corner probably about to fall asleep before Keith threw a water bottle at him and slid down the wall to sit next to him.

Shiro turned his attention to the screens in front of him, until this point, they simply had their scanners and coms active so that they would notify them if the Castle of Lions tried to contact them or was close by. Now, however, Shiro was going to use this impressive technology to actively try to find the Castle of Lions. They had no idea what had happened to Coran or Allura after they were separated during their space fight with the Galra. Man, it felt like months ago when they started their original mission. They had been planning to create a trading post and communication tower on a nearby planet before they had been ambushed by the Galra and ended up crashing onto a planet that was still unknown to them. The tower that they had intended to build was going to help the long-distance coms of the Rebellion work better and faster, while the trading post was going to allow a safe place for their supply ships to rest and refuel before continuing on their way.

Supposedly, there was no Galra in this area, but apparently Zarkon or one of his generals had a similar idea and had already deployed scouts in that sector. The Paladins and those scouts found each other while patrolling and inspecting the planet, which unsurprisingly led to a battle. The surprising part was how bad the battle had become, the Galra quickly managed to put the Paladins on defense and slowly forced them further and further away from the Castle of Lions. That was something Shiro was planning on looking into, but that would have to wait. For now, the only thing that mattered was getting back together and getting off of this strange planet.

* * *

“This is a terrible plan.”

“Meth.”

“It is! Scratch that, it’s not even a plan!”

“Calm down Meth. Orders are orders. I’m sure Leader’s got something brewing we just need to be patient. And honestly, I can’t believe I’m the one having to say that to you of all people. You’re a stealth agent, you’re supposed to excel at being patient.” Kalabhiti urged the worked up Methuselah.

“Yeah well usually I don’t just sit around and watch. That’s someone else’s job. I hang out at one of the outposts, get briefs, receive my orders, then I’m deployed. I go from base, to mission, and back again. I wasn’t trained for recon.”

“Well welcome to my world! With my speed, recon is pretty much a daily occurrence, you get used to it after a while. You could at least feel lucky that yours has moved Meth, mine’s just sat here since we arrived.”

“You’ve got to find a better nickname for me, you know that?”

“Get a better name and maybe I will.”

“Whatever you say, Kali.”

“Nope, nuh-uh, no way. Greenie or Kalabhiti, no Kali.”

“Now that’s just not fair man.”

“Well, them’s the rules. Deal with it.”

 

Kalayavan and Yamajit glanced over their respected shoulders fondly, it had been a while since they had seen the two Elites speak and tease each other freely. Normally, around Command and the other outposts, they limited their playful banter to remain professional and due to their drastically different skill sets, they rarely were deployed on the same missions.

“Would those two just kiss and get it over with already?” Yamajit muttered as the pair continued to make witty jabs towards each other. The two Captains couldn’t hear what the men were saying, but their body language and gestures gave them enough information.

“Good luck with that. Could you imagine if they tried? With all those regulations on dating as an Elite they’d go crazy.” Kalayavan chuckled.

“Well I’m about to go crazy. But no, no one cares about my mental stability.”

Kalayavan smacked the side of his arm then, “Come on, they’re Elites! They’re probably just trying to come up with a plan, or their exchanging information like Leader told them to do.”

“Whatever you say Yavan.”

“Yavan? Been a while since you’ve called me that.”

“Your name’s too damn long and hard to pronounce, so ‘Yavan’ it is.”

“Fair enough, Yama.”

“Hey, now. Mine’s easy!”

 

“Those two need to kiss and move on.” Methuselah informed Kalabhiti as he watched the two Captains snickering to each other.

“Okay, sure. Random, but why the hell not? Now, what about ‘Gray’?”

“No.”

“Grey?”

“You just said that!”

“Nope, the first one was ‘gray’ with an ‘a’ the second was with an ‘e’.”

“They’re still pronounced the same way! So if I say ‘no’ to one, then that means ‘no’ to both!”

“Uh, fine. What about ‘Selah’?”

“That sounds nothing like me.”

“How’s ‘Thuse’?”

“Worse.”

“Well then face it man, your name was not meant to be turned into a nickname.”

“Pardon the interruption, Sir.” A scout from Kalabhiti’s team interjected in their obviously very important, very Elite-like conversation.

“What is it?” Kalabhiti answered, instantly falling back into his role of an Elite.

“We’ve seen the targets rapidly moving between the two Beasts. It’s happened twice now. The first time, two targets exited the Blue One and entered the Yellow One. The second, was two from the Yellow into the Blue.”

“The same ones?”

“It doesn’t appear so. The glimpse that we got of them, looked like they had different body features and their armors were different colors.”

“Alright, dismissed.”

“So, they’re working on something.” Methuselah thought aloud.

“Command did say that they were sure that the targets knew of the bombs that we hid in their legs. I’d imagine that they’re working on removing those, and if they do, they’ll have free movement again.”

“We can’t afford that. If those things get operational we don’t have the fire power to take them down. From what I can tell the only way to stop the Beasts is to take down whoever is inside. Problem with that is, the only one who can enter the stationary Beasts is me, and the only one fast enough to catch the moving Beasts is you; but neither one of us can take them down alone when there’s two or three enemies inside.”

“Then it’s time to report to Command. There’s nothing more we can do.”

“I don’t think that there’s anything more we can do without exposing ourselves. If capturing or killing them is the goal, we need to draw them out and face them head on where their Beasts can’t help them.”

“You think it’s come to that, eh? Let’s see what Command says.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, 13 chapters. I never thought that would happen. Thank you so much for the support, without you guys, this never would have happened. I always thought the longest would be four chapters! Chapter 14 is coming up. See you next time!  
> ~Kiera540

**Author's Note:**

> I haven’t forgotten about Hunk don’t worry! He just comes in a little later. Well I really hope you enjoyed that! This is my first multi-chapter fic, my longest, and my first Voltron fic! Lots of firsts in this one. Please like and comment what you thought so I can improve. Chapter 2 is already in the works. See you next time!  
> ~Kiera540


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